


The One Who Should Not Be

by Lady_Eaglewings



Category: Naruto
Genre: Danzo needs to die, Forgive Me, Gen, She is too old for this, Soldier in Naruto, Spiraling into insanity, Training Montage, What happens when you don't know the plot, author sucks at tagging, starts out happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-05-19 16:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14877026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Eaglewings/pseuds/Lady_Eaglewings
Summary: This type of thing is supposed to happen to teenage fangirls in fanfiction. Not to thirty-year-old marines that never got beyond episode two before calling it quits. Throw in treacherous ninja, paranoia, and the craziness that was the Uchiha Clan and… well. And to think it all started out so well. In any case Uchiha Chiyomi was most definitely not amused by this whole situation.





	1. Prologue: Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> Hello guys! This is just an idea that's been growing slowly on my laptop for a while now! Send me some feedback!

**Prologue : Rebirth**

Fleur LeBeau thought that this only happened to teenage girls in fanfiction. ‘This’ as in the whole ‘get dumped into your favorite fandom as a relative of your favorite character’ thing. It should _not_ happen to a Thirty-two-year-old Marine just back from a tour in Afghanistan. Because really, she was over thirty. She was too old for this shit.

Fleur LeBeau didn’t die dramatically with regrets and all that jazz. She didn’t have dramatic angst to wax poetry about. She didn’t even have a sob story. She had lived her life with her fair share of challenges. She had served her country and had been proud of her service. She had made friends, made enemies and just lived her life. She really couldn’t blame cancer for being cancer. It just sucked that it got her in the end.

Fleur LeBeau had been raised in a mostly-Christian household. Thus, she hoped for pearly gates and didn’t really want to see hell fire.

She was _not_ amused with the… blankness.

She was understandably upset when she was then squeezed out and smacked in the ass and thoroughly rubbed down. Like any man-handled woman she had let out a rather angry yell. Or, what had been intended as a roar of rage turned into…

“WAAAAHHHHHH!!!”

Oh she did not just…

“WAHHHHH!” Oh good, wasn’t her.

“Gwahahhhhhhh!” Oh crap. _That_ was her.

The world wasn’t blank but it wasn’t much either. It was a series of colored blobs that moved about. Whatever kind of afterlife this was Fleur LeBeau was not satisfied and would very much like to see the pearly gates now please.

No luck. Just babbling of what Fleur hoped was some kind of language. Great. Anytime someone wanted to explain? No? Of course.

The non-life from there was a series of sounds and blurs. There was the feeling of fatigue and hunger so if this was the after-life it sucked.

It sucked even more when her vision cleared up and she promptly screamed when she saw a _massive_ face. Great. The afterlife was filled with giants. She was going to be eaten by giants.

There was a lot of babbling and someone else crying in the background.

It took Fleur a good while to figure out what had happened. A good while because it took her a good while to take a good look at her limbs.

She promptly burst out crying because _son of a bitch_ she was now a chubby baby. And if the wailing from beside her was any indication…

“WAHHHHHHH! AHHHHH!!”

She wasn’t the only baby in the room. That… could actually be helpful. No need to be labeled a freak.

Turned out, baby number two was clingy when given something. Fleur had made the mistake of poking the kid _once_ and was now the designated comfort-pillow and slobber-toy. Still, baby number two was cute. He was a rather smiley baby with a gummy grin and stubby limbs. Fleur didn’t think that she was quite the same but she could be wrong.

There was also an older kid. Black eyes and black hair. Obviously related to baby number two. Fleur kind of hoped that she wasn’t adopted and if she was it wouldn’t look too obvious. Having blond hair would stick out like a neon sign in this place. Dear lord don’t have her have blond hair…

The two adults were hopefully parents and not in charge of the orphanage or something like that. Being an orphan would suck. Fleur was _used_ to having a loving family, she wasn’t willing to give that up.

Just when she was settling into her nice new non-life she got a rather nasty shock. Finally her baby brain and her baby ears had developed enough for her to process the babble as words and language. Her eyes had also gone back to working at normal capacity so… of course that was when things went downhill.

Hopefully-Mother was holding a giggling Baby Number Two was in her arms and trying to avoid having the pull the hair off her scalp. Fleur was obligingly reaching for the stuffed animal that Older-Kid was waving about. Then Hopefully-mother turned around and on the back of her clothing was… was… it was a table-tennis racket. Well, it looked like one at least. Red paddle-like shape with a white grip thing. Who the hell wore a table-tennis racket on the back? Was Hopefully-Mother some kind of athlete?

Evidently not. Mainly because one day they were let out of the house. Okay, they were still babies and had to be carried but they were let out of the wooden house and walked down the street.

Most of it was babble but…

“Uchiha-san!”

That, that most definitely wasn’t babble.

Fleur could have dismissed it, she really could have. Except…

“Kono ko wa Sasuke. Sochi ra wa Chiyomi.”

Uchiha. Uchiha Sasuke. Tennis-racket thingy. SON OF A BITCH!

Oh she had better _not_ be in some fictional cartoon. She refused to be part of Bleach! Wait… no that didn’t sound right. What was it? Oh. Oh yeah, Bleach was the one with the weird-sword-wielding ghost-thingies. Then what the hell was… Ramen? Wait, no, who the hell named a series Ramen? What was it? Natto? Close but didn’t seem right. Oh who cared! The _point_ was that she was in some sort of fictional universe related to a _pretty major character_ and with no idea how the plot develops past episode two. Great. Just great.

For heavens sake she was _thirty_. Not some teenage girl. By the time she had been introduced to… what was it? Nabana? Naturi? Na-something, she was already a Marine and the blond kid was annoying. He yelled, he was obnoxious, he had no respect for his elders and it was such an inaccurate depiction of ninja life that she had snorted in disgust and refused to continue the series no matter what her friends had said. In Fleur’s opinion, ninjas were stealthy badass-assassins that worked from the shadows. Not flashy idiots who ran around thinking that the world revolved around them.

Ninjas were supposed to be smart, sly, a shadow that you never noticed. Not monologue about their evil plans and yell for the whole world to hear. Ninjas were supposed to blend in, complete rigorous training to become elite warriors that served their lord from the shadows. Not dressed in wild colors with no concept of stealth.

Fleur hadn’t been impressed and after the blond kid got the fan girl and the emo bastard well, she had decided that she had better things to do with her life.

Well the universe was definitely laughing at her now. Why couldn’t this have happened to someone who had at least _watched_ the stupid cartoon? Yes, yes, anime not cartoon. Same difference.

This crap was supposed to happen to teenage girls in their fantasies. This was supposed to happen to fangirls who wrote themselves into the story trying to ‘fix-it’ to their liking. This wasn’t supposed to happen to a Marine who hadn’t gotten past season one, episode two. So why pray tell has it happened to her?

This would _suck_.

On the bright side, Baby Number Two’s name was Sasuke. Good to know.

Older-kid turned out to be named Itachi.

Fleur’s new name? Uchiha Chiyomi.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The baby years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Here's the next installment! Leave me a comment down below and let me know what you think!

** Chapter 1: ** **Baby years are Humiliating**

 

Stories always had some sort of beginning. They were however, usually not _this_ humiliating generally. Turned out, there was a good reason that our baby brains don’t remember those first formative years.

I was unlucky enough that I _did_.

There were good moments, and there were bad. But the _worst_ memory really took the cake. It was from my most early days. From when I still hadn’t gotten a proper grasp of how time passed.

The worst moment was when I figured out what fueled the ninja’s super-powers. It wasn’t anything grotesquely horrifying like eating the hearts of babies, but it was still terrifying. It also fully convinced me that what was happening wasn’t one massive hallucination. It convinced me that yes, this was real life and whatever thing that powered these ninjas? It was _real_.

You’d think that it would’ve been the best moment of my baby years because who doesn’t like a good superhero power-origin story? You know since powers don’t just sprout from _nowhere_. Like Superman and his whole plant-like deal by getting power from the sun. Spiderman was bitten by the worst mutant spider ever. X-men and their mutant genes. So on and so forth. Going by that logic, I really should have known that ninjas had a source for their flashy moves too.

I hadn’t even considered it. Until a very rude wakeup call.

It was literally a wakeup call. A wakeup call because we had been happily sleeping then. Itachi was on baby-sitting duty that night. Sasuke was in a sling in his arms and I was trusted to remain in a baby-basket against his side. It had been Sasuke’s basket but the little brat had kicked up so much of a fuss that we had to change. I could see that Sasuke was spoilt rotten already.

Itachi on the other hand had to be some kind of genius because he looked like he was _five_. Who the hell left a five-year-old unsupervised with a pair of babies? Our parents apparently. What the heck _they_ were doing I haven’t the faintest clue but I kind of worried about Sasuke and Itachi’s continued health if they thought this type of behavior was totally acceptable.

Turned out, they had good reason to leave the kiddies alone all night long.

It was the middle of the night when I woke up. As a baby I didn’t feel much. Warmth, hunger, fatigue, wet diapers… humiliating, but nothing much else. Babies were rather well cared for in this place. So I was understandably terrified when a blanket of _energy_ seemed to fall upon us and with that blanket came pain, fear and a general… foulness that had not only Sasuke but me bursting out into tears.

It was like phantom pain. It was a sensation that was like my skin peeling off of my body in the most painful way manner impossible. It was like I’d been dunked entirely in boiling water. It _hurt_. It hurt but at the same time it _didn’t_ because it didn’t have the bite of _real_ pain. It was like a much too vivid memory of it. That prickling sensation that you felt sometimes when you remember an old injury but ten thousand times worse.

I _screamed_ because I had no clue what the hell it was and it was scaring the daylights out of me.

I’ll never know how he did it because little Itachi who could barely fit just _Sasuke_ in his arms hauled the both of us out of the Uchiha compound to join in the evacuation. I _may_ have figured out how he did it if I wasn’t too busy wailing. Whatever the hell it was _hurt_. It hurt and there wasn’t even an understandable cause for the pain. I had no clue where it was coming from, no identifiable reason of _why_ there was suddenly so much hurt. No explanation for the blanket of _something_ that was threatening to suffocate me like a boiling plastic bag over my face.

It was chaos and even in my wailing I knew _that_ much. The bells clanged in a rhythm that could only mean _emergency_. It was repetitive, piercing and even as I screamed my lungs out with Sasuke we weren’t being shushed. Itachi didn’t have the time. He didn’t have the time to settle us, didn’t even have the time to make sure we were _comfortable_. He was just running.

I didn’t see much from that night but I heard more than enough.

I knew the sounds. The sounds of chaos, of panic. Civilians screaming. Soldiers barking orders. The scrambling footsteps. Hurried and stumbling, disciplined and purposeful. Loud explosion-like thumps of stone hitting earth.

It was the sounds of invasion.

I screamed and screamed because something _terrible_ was going down and I felt like I was being burned alive by an invisible force.

There was a bone deep terror. Of panic, of worry. The standard things in a crisis. Where was my family, where were my loved ones, how likely was I going to get hurt, how likely was I to _die_. What were my options, _were_ there any options.

But there was another type of fear. A fear that was primal. When you were facing some sort of invisible threat. Like the dark, or seeing something that wasn’t exactly threatening but just looked _wrong_. A sort of primal fear all humans had for _something_ that was without explanation.

Except it was burning me alive.

I couldn’t understand that terror. Until I suddenly _could_.

It was a sound. A sound that could only be described as a _roar_ that cut through all the other sounds of chaos and panic.

I screamed along with the roar because _what the hell was that_.

Itachi didn’t slow down. He ran faster.

I couldn’t tell you how long that all lasted because to me, it never really ended. The terror didn’t end, the mind-numbing horror didn’t end and the energy that was threatening to burn me alive was suddenly _everywhere_.

Even when the chaos settled, even when Itachi stopped running, even when we were returned to the arms of our parents without a physical scratch.

The next chunk of time was a muddle of terror and confusion for me.

There was a lot of crying. Quite a few hospital visits that I was sure made things _worse_ because there was so much more of that _energy_ in the hospital and it freaked me out.

I also think we moved houses during that time but I couldn’t be _quite_ sure. I didn’t pay much attention.

Eventually though, the hospital trips settled down and while I still cried pretty much twenty-four hours a day, everyone seemed to be waiting whatever the hell kind of terror I was going through out.

There was a lot of talking over my head. In that hushed low-worried voice that I didn’t really care about at that point because I was too busy bawling my eyes out trying to figure out why the world felt so _wrong_.

It did eventually abate though.

I adjusted to the whole ‘wrongness’ of the situation and while the feeling of some sort of _energy_ sent unpleasant shudders through my mind, I wasn’t freaking out at the slightest hint of it.

It was… disconcerting. Unpleasant. Like being submerged in warm-cold slime. That really gross temperature of not quite warm but not quite cold that just… rubs you the wrong way. It was a physical sensation but at the same time it just plain _wasn’t_. Like phantom pain almost.

The crying died down when I slowly managed to process that the weird feeling was just… well, weird. The terror accompanying that faded away and while concentrated amounts of the stuff at the hospital still sent me crying for my mother, day-to-day crying stopped. Hospital trips were the worst.

Things… didn’t really go back to normal. It was more like the feeling of discomfort and wrongness _became_ the new normal and I just learned how to deal with it better.

Once the blind terror had abated, I just had to sort of… live with it.

What else was I supposed to do?

The hospital trips stopped and I was kind of just stuck with some weird perpetually ruffled sixth-sense for… something or other.

It wasn’t exactly the most _ideal_ way to live but as time went by, it became… not expressly _better_ but more easily handled.

Human minds tended to try and _avoid_ insanity. Constantly freaked out about some sort of unknown energy-thing that always felt _off_ was a good way to spiral into insanity. So it was both a conscious and unconscious effort to focus away from the new and disturbing status quo.

Sasuke and Itachi provided for very handy distractions.

My perception of time might be skewed or something but to me, Sasuke started baby babble… early. Almost terrifyingly early. Did babies usually start trying to talk before their first set of _teeth_ grew in?

I didn’t have a clue. But Sasuke was doing it and so it should stand to reason that meant I should be doing it too.

That’s the wonderful thing about having a twin. Just look at what the other guy was doing and copy that.

Our parents got all excited about it too. And yes, I’d finally admitted that the people I’d dubbed Hopefully-mother and Hopefully-father were _actually_ my parents in this life. About time I know.

Since I didn’t want to be left behind by Sasuke, or be branded a moron for the rest of all eternity, I started babbling nonsense too.

It was through all the babblings that I figured out what language everyone spoke here. Japanese.

There were a lot of ‘kaa-san’ and ‘tou-san’ repetitions which was what clued me in. I’d taken a few Japanese classes back in my old life as Fleur because Fleur’s sister was the weaboo of the family. I remembered the basic greetings, way too many honorifics, the titles given to various members of an immediate family and a few random smatterings of vocabulary. Like the word ‘kabocha’ which meant pumpkin. The most random and useless thing to remember I know but it stuck with me because it _was_ so random and useless.

Since Sasuke was making the ‘ka’ sound quite well, I decided that my poor father deserved some love too and opted for making the ‘to’ sound.

Easier said than done. Sasuke had snagged the easy one.

Itachi was also gunning for a ‘nii-san’ but I’d feel kind of bad for my father if we managed to spit out the word ‘brother’ before ‘dad’. Itachi would just have to wait.

To make sure I didn’t progress freakishly fast, I let Sasuke go first. It took him a solid week but he got there. He even made my mother cry with his first shaky

“Kaa-kaa!”

That had my mother squealing and nearly squishing the living daylights out of poor Sasuke. I joined in on the fun.

“Tou!”

I completed it with grabby motions towards my father. Good choice too because my mother was in literal tears at that point and gushing all over us. My father had me securely in his arms so I was safe from being squished. I think Sasuke was turning blue though.

Reaction wise, my father’s stern-faced blankness wasn’t all that impressive. I’d probably have been highly discouraged and _really_ hurt by it if he wasn’t literally holding me to his chest. From here, I could see quite plainly that his ears were a brilliant fire-engine red.

His face was still stone-cold though. It was… oddly hilarious.

Itachi ended up pouting. Sorry bro. You’re next. I promise.

Itachi was _not_ next. Teething was next and it hurt like the a of a bitch. Sasuke wailing didn’t help things.

Hello sleepless nights. Again. Joy. At least we suffered together.

We did get through it in the end though. Barely.

Turned out, teeth really helped with the whole ‘talking’ thing which was great. ‘Nii-nii’ was finally forced out and that made Itachi’s day so there was that.

Sasuke was a bright kid. After his first word he had started to make remote sense by spitting out single words and pointing at objects. I decided to do the same. Mainly because that was my limit too. Japanese grammar was a little confusing for someone who had spent a lifetime of speaking English. Everything seemed to be arranged differently. Everything was done on a trial-and-error basis but immersion was truly a great way to learn another language. That and when you literally had no other choice.

The first birthday wasn’t all that celebrated. Mainly because it was the birthday of two babies. Sasuke and I just sat around missing out on all the good stuff. I wanted to wail because that fried chicken looked _really_ good. We got baby formula instead. It tasted like sour off-ripe fruit.

Potty training was… well, it was a lesson in humiliation and the only thing I could be thankful for is that they actually had flushing toilets. No idea how since everything _else_ looked like it was from stereotypical samurai-era Japan, but I wasn’t very eager to go question it. I honestly wasn’t. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. I took small comfort from the fact that Sasuke had more ‘accidents’ than me. This would have been blackmail gold if I wasn’t wetting myself as well. Like I said. Humiliating.

I actually took to crawling and walking faster than Sasuke did. Mainly because Sasuke was a pampered little thing that didn’t know that he was supposed to start crawling and not just rolling around. He needed a little encouragement in the form of example-by-twin.

It fell generally to poor Itachi to make sure that us two babies didn’t get ourselves killed now that we had locomotion going. For a kid he was actually doing very well. Or perhaps that was because I mostly helped the poor guy out and didn’t go anywhere that wasn’t baby-friendly. Unlike Sasuke the brat who nearly crawled off the porch and into the koi pond one time. Honestly, that child. It had been a rather spectacular save on Itachi’s part. I had applauded him. Sasuke the little brat giggled and tried to do it again. We were promptly hauled back into the house after that. Guess they didn’t want us outside near the ponds. Wonder _why_.

Sasuke seemed to be following my example so I decided that we should get us walking. That turned out to be easier said than done because baby Sasuke was quite happy just crawling about. He didn’t even want to stand for heaven’s sake. Talk about a lazy baby. He was a cute giggly lazy baby so he could be forgiven.

I on the other hand had obtained quite a few bumps and even the single bruise in my quest to stand on two legs. I could have dealt with a bruise. Hell, I could have dealt with a broken bone just fine as Fleur. Turned out, baby Uchiha didn’t do well with pain. I had burst out crying. Wonderful. Also humiliating. Very humiliating.

I was still working on the whole _standing_ thing when Itachi apparently was old enough to go to ninja-school. I kid you not they have ninja-school.

Welcome to the world of anime I guess. Ninja school. For heaven’s sake…

Sasuke was most definitely _not_ pleased by this and had thrown a rather long tantrum because Ita-nii wasn’t there. I had been the one giving the kid sniffling puppy eyes as he walked out the door. I was pretty disappointed too. Itachi was always a good source of entertainment. He was very susceptible to the puppy eyes. And he was scary-smart. No, literally so smart that it was scary at times. Which meant he could figure out what we wanted just from a few grabby motions and garbled babbling. Itachi’s great. Kaa-san coddled us a little too much. Or maybe that was just me. Yeah, that was probably just me. I was over thirty years old damn it. I was way too old to be cooed at.

The first day without Itachi around, Sasuke was inconsolable. The little brat wouldn’t stop wailing no matter what my poor mother did. Sorry Kaa-san, Itachi was Sasuke’s favorite.

When Itachi came home from his first day he was promptly used as a pillow by Sasuke and if removed would prompt the baby to start wailing at the top of his lungs. I shot Itachi the most betrayed puppy eyes I could. He left me alone with the wailing baby. How could he? I gave him the eyes that made it abundantly clear I blamed him for this whole mess.

Our parents seemed to find this hilarious. Guess Kaa-san wasn’t too broken up about not being Sasuke’s favorite.

Sasuke was most definitely _not_ amused when Itachi took up training outside the academy too. He was barely home for dinner most days.

By the time we were two I had obtained a decent grasp on the Japanese language that everyone here seemed to speak. Sasuke was getting quite good too although he generally only stuck to baby babble. Sasuke was still insisting on crawling though. I had mastered standing. Walking only resulted in tumbles. I was doing better than Sasuke. For a kid who couldn’t stand he had done a very good job of somehow clambering up a chair and then promptly falling off. Itachi had performed a spectacular dive-catch. So spectacular in fact that Sasuke now thought it was a game and had to be scolded to the point of crying to get him to stop trying to kill himself via chair.

I worried for this child at times, I really did.

Also by the time we were two, Itachi being the ridiculous ninja-genius that he apparently was, graduated from the academy after just one year. Apparently it was a Big Deal, capitals needed. So, older genius brother that now knew how to kill people with pointy things. If Fleur hadn’t been a Marine in a past life I would have been freaking out about now. As it was, I was only disturbed by the fact that he was _seven_. No really. He had his birthday a month ago. From what I could hear, it had caused quite the stir in the village and the Uchiha clan were like proud mother hens. If you knew what to look for that is.

Uchiha were subtle like that. My father was exhibit A on that front. I’d figured him out by now. He was pretty much the most awkward parent on the face of the earth. He sucked at interacting with children simply because he didn’t know what to do. And he was easily embarrassed by obvious signs of affection. Like the time I gave him that plucked flower from the yard. He’d kept the flower and his ears had stayed a solid red for a good half-hour.

So yeah. Uchiha as a general rule _cared_. They just sucked at showing it. I was betting that we had a reputation for being assholes.

By the time we turned three it was time to introduce us to the ‘wider’ society. See, apparently ninja clans had a tradition. Because of the high infant mortality rates that occurred during the Warring Era children weren’t really presented to society until they hit three years of age. By that age they could mostly walk and talk and was considered smart enough not to do something stupid and get themselves killed. That didn’t stop kids dying though. Hence the Shichi-Go-San ceremonies. They were like mile-stones. Children were celebrated for hitting the ages of seven, five and three. Thus being three we were being celebrated for our wondrous achievement. It was more of an achievement on Sasuke’s part than mine. I honestly worried about that child because of all the times he’d almost managed to off himself.

Because apparently the Uchiha clan were some sort of noble-ninja-clan the event was formal. Formal as in traditional dress. I hadn’t even realized that they made kimonos this miniature.

The ceremony itself was boring. We weren’t the only kids there but we sat smack bang in the middle of the front row. Apparently our parents were important.

No, not apparently. Our parents _were_ important because it was _Tou-san_ that stood up to give some sort of long speech about the future of the Uchiha clan and how he would lead it. I didn’t really get the whole message, too many ‘adult words’ thrown around. Hey, I was three. My vocabulary wasn’t exactly the best. There were some words that you just didn’t throw around when three year olds were in the room.

The kids got restless real quick but were just as quickly glared into submission by their respective parents. No one wanted to make a bad impression at some super-important clan event I guess.

After the speech was over we were all lined up one by one at the front. Like some sort of toddler conga line. Except nowhere near as fun.

Sasuke and I were somewhere in the middle.

Then we got shuffled across the front of the room with Tou-san giving each kid a fan. Yeah. Fans. Like the table-tennis-rackets that was apparently the clan symbol.

Sasuke went ahead of me and got his fan and a pat on the head. Then he shuffled ahead with the rest of the herd.

“Welcome to the Uchiha Clan Chiyomi.” Tou-san said giving me a head-pat too and handing over the fan. I bowed like every kid before me and scuttled off the stage so that the next impatient three-year-old could get _their_ fan.

The fan was heavy. Metal. Not those flimsy paper things. This was hefty metal. What the hell? Who the heck made fans out of _metal_? Even the decorative ones I’d seen in my past life were made from paper. Expensive-ass paper but still paper.

When fan-giving ceremony was done we sort of sat through another speech before we were finally allowed to leave. The fans were promptly taken up by our parents. Apparently they were of some kind of importance. I decided to ask.

“Kaa-san, what that?” I pointed to the fan and my mother smiled down at me. She was a beautiful woman on most days but today was a special occasion. She was radiant.

“This is a symbol that you are part of the Uchiha clan Chiyomi.” Kaa-san said with a smile. I didn’t really get it but I figured it was like some sort of glorified membership card. So I nodded and took Sasuke’s fist out of his mouth. The kid was _still_ sucking on his hands. Oral fixation anyone? I was going to have to do something drastic to break him of the habit. I had caught him trying to shove a dirt-covered hand into his mouth more than once.

“Sasu-nii. No.” I say and Sasuke gives me kicked puppy looks. Too bad I had taught him the kicked puppy look and was the supreme overlord of them. Oh yeah, I’d also found out that I was the baby of the family. Sasuke was a whooping sixty seconds older. It sucked. I was three decades older than this brat and I was the _baby_ of this family? I was of the opinion that it sucked more than being reborn in some sort of cartoon.

Talking about cartoonish things, apparently three years old was considered old enough to start ninja training. I’m not even kidding. Apparently it was common and well, a lot was expected because great big brother Itachi was already toddling around throwing kunai and shurikin at our age and it was about time we caught up.

It went as well as could be expected when you gave three year olds something to throw around.

We got lectured about how this was going to affect our future and it was for our own damned good so take it seriously. Sasuke was near tears and I was feeling guilty as well. It _probably_ hadn’t been a good idea to goof off. So obviously at least.

The next day we didn’t goof off and throw the practice-shurikin in random directions. I actually managed to hit a target. It wasn’t dead center but it was close.

“Good work Chiyomi.” Tou-san said patting my head before going over to correct Sasuke’s stance. I frowned a little. I didn’t know what type of parenting this was but wasn’t it a bad idea to only praise one child? Still, Fleur never had any kids and only had one little sister that had been a fashion designer so it wasn’t like she was an expert on family relations.

Or maybe it was just my father being the awkward parent that he was again.

It was obvious by the end of the week that I was showing more talent at throwing pointy objects than Sasuke. Mainly because when Sasuke finally hit a target intentionally I was getting bulls-eyes nine out of ten. To make matters worse, all Sasuke got for that achievement was a brisk correction of his stance. Not the ‘good job Chiyomi’ I had gotten when I managed the same feat.  

By the end of the month I felt absolutely horrible. Sasuke was still stuck on his single kunai and shurikin where as I had been graduated onto throwing two at a time. The second one missed a lot more than the first but it was still two. If it was just progressing at a faster rate I wouldn’t have given it much thought. It was the fact that our father had some rather questionable parenting strategies. If you didn’t come in first place you didn’t get praised. Basically, if someone achieved something before you then it wasn’t anything noteworthy. First or nothing was the feeling I got. Poor Sasuke had been frustrated to tears trying to get his blades to hit the mark. Itachi tried to help, he really did giving Sasuke the praise that Tou-san wasn’t handing out but it was different. Sasuke wanted his father to pat him on the head and tell him that he had done a good job like he had seen the man do for Itachi and I. He wanted his father to be proud of him and not just tell him what he was doing wrong.

I was revaluating my father’s character to be sure. Was I wrong and just reading too much into things? Was my father not awkward and just an asshole? Dear lord I hoped not.

I felt horrible. Horrible because I was only so good thanks to Fleur. I was only so good because of a past life-time. Fleur had been a marine. Having good aim was pretty much a given. It had carried over, the techniques, the snap-judgements. Hell, my more mature mind picked up on what worked and what didn’t a lot faster than Sasuke’s three-year-old brain.  I was pretty much cheating and poor Sasuke was starting from scratch. If I had known, I would have backed up and let Sasuke get the achievements. The poor kid needed some recognition for his efforts. It was too late now. Too late to pull back because I had already shown talent. Son of a bitch. I couldn’t even slow my progress because Tou-san could _tell_ when I wasn’t doing my best and the ensuing lecture wasn’t pleasant for anyone in the immediate area.

I promised myself that I would be dismal from the get-go at the next ninja art our father showed us.

It turned out, that the next thing shown was basic stretches and katas for the Uchiha clan’s style of taijutsu. Swift Paw didn’t sound remotely frightening but apparently it was a formidable style. I hadn’t really argued but kept an eye on Sasuke’s progress.

The basis of the Swift Paw was a supple body ready for both attack and defense. It wasn’t too hard to fake being dismal at it. There was a careful balance to be had. Too soft and you’ll be beaten to a pulp, too stiff and you’ll be beaten to a pulp.

Sasuke got the right balance with a few tries. I remained stubbornly on either side of the extremes.

I got scolded a lot as well as quite a few disappointed looks because I _should_ be getting this. I remained stubborn and they praised Sasuke more. The kid was over the moon he was so happy. Worth it. I could handle the lectures.

Thank _god_ this world adhered to some form of common sense. The principal to making good soldiers wasn’t to break them into itty bitty pieces every time they fail. It was a careful balance of carrot and stick. Tou-san’s carrot and stick was praise and disappointment. Over who know how many years someone must have figured out that you couldn’t _actually_ beat ‘ninja’ into a kid. Well, you could try but you’d end up with a shit ninja that would probably bite your head off the first chance it got. Unstable, skilled at killing, and bitter were not good combinations.

So yeah, I had almost been expecting a Spartan training program going by how backwards and ridiculous the _rest_ of this world was but thank god I’d been wrong. I still think that shooting fireballs was the most un-ninja-like thing you could do though. I mean… seriously? Anyone ever heard of stealth? No?

What I found harder to handle however were Kaa-san’s insistence on manners. The Uchiha were a clan with a ten foot pole stuck up their ass on a good day and a twenty-foot-pole on a grumpy day. How to sit, how to eat, how to bow. I was going to be raised a proper lady this time round apparently.

I paid attention because my mother could be _terrifying_ when she was annoyed. She had this way of _smiling_ at you with her eyes closed that told you to obey or start running for the hills. Since I couldn’t outrun her, yet, I sat in the seiza position and endured the tea-ceremony instruction. It sucked. Sasuke wasn’t a girl. He didn’t know my pain.

The worst thing was that I couldn’t downright refuse my mother either. Mainly because…

“Chiyomi! Chiyomi! Look what Kaa-san made you!” Kaa-san said enthusiastically showing me _another_ new yukata. It was nearing summer and that included wardrobe changes. Kaa-san was ecstatic to have a girl to dote on. Apparently Itachi had stopped being cute and Sasuke was trying to follow in his big brother’s footsteps. That left me. Life as the baby of the family ladies and gentlemen.

“It looks great Kaa-san!” I replied with a smile even though I thought that the bright pink obi was pushing it a little. Bright pink? Seriously? Wasn’t this a clan of ninjas? “Do you want me to try it on?”

“Of course! Come on, let Kaa-san help you.” Kaa-san said with a smile that lit up her entire being and who could say no to that? Although she smiled and said that she was proud of her sons for trying so hard at such a young age I saw that she was lonely. Her husband was constantly out at work and when he _was_ home he was training the kids. Her eldest son was a genin after just one year at the academy and was now running missions under a Jounin. The Jounin wasn’t an Uchiha had had only come to the house once to introduce himself.

“Good morning Uchiha-san.” The Jounin had said with a bow as Kaa-san opened the door. He was tall but he just… was forgettable. Not hideously ugly but no head-turning pretty-boy either. Black hair, slightly-tanned skin, brown eyes. Forgettable. Which in my opinion made him more ninja-like than the seven-foot-tall guy I’d seen walking around in full red samurai armor. Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb. Kaa-san had called him an Akimichi whatever the hell _that_ was.

“Oh my, can I help you Shinobi-san?” Kaa-san had asked. Apparently it was the polite way to refer to an unknown ninja if you weren’t an active ninja yourself. That had been drilled into me after I had shouted ‘Hey you!’ at a group of genin that had bumped into me in the street. Kaa-san hadn’t been at all pleased at that incident. It was the incident that had started this whole ‘manners education’ thing.

“I am your son’s Jounin-sensei starting today. Is perhaps your husband home?” It was polite to ask apparently. I thought that it was sexist. A woman could hold her own just fine. However apparently because Kaa-san was now a housewife… well, let’s just say that tradition was seeped deep in the Uchiha clan.

“I’m sorry, he’s at the Police Station at the moment. He should be home soon though, can I offer you some tea while you wait?” Kaa-san offered with a smile. Tea, another etiquette thing. Ugh. I got the hell out of dodge in case Kaa-san wanted me to join in too.

“That would be wonderful Uchiha-san. Thank you.”

With that he was let in and us children were being shut out of the tea room. That was the first and last time we saw Itachi’s Jounin-sensei. Not the friendliest of ninjas. But I have to say, I’d yet to meet _any_ friendly ninjas. Which may or may not because I generally only interacted with Uchiha and we weren’t the friendliest of people… nah.

With Itachi running missions all day every day Sasuke felt the need to do something himself. So he turned to training all day every day. Training couldn’t be done indoors. Especially when you were throwing around very pointy objects. So more often than not he was in the training fields or in our back yard which was filled with a maze of koi ponds. Tou-san had a slight obsession. Just a slight one.

I was literally the only one in the house on some days and I think Kaa-san clung to me a little. I dealt with it because I felt bad.

Didn’t mean I liked to have my hair done every day. No matter how gentle a parent was, it always hurt at some point in the process. Elaborate braids and the like although fancy-looking actually took quite the effort. Kaa-san insisted and I couldn’t really find a reason to refuse so… I was stuck.

Sasuke and Itachi should consider themselves fortunate. They weren’t the ones that had to deal with tea ceremony and flower arrangement. The tea was bitter and I didn’t really see the point of flower arrangement. Sure, it was considered an art form but… there were so many layers of meaning to the thing. Flowers had their own language, a language that I was required to learn. I mostly remembered that some flowers were actually edible and took an interest in the ones that were apparently poisonous.

Kaa-san to her credit had tried to get me more interested by pointing out that flowers could be code. I was of the opinion that it was suspicious as heck for two people to be giving each other flowers out of the blue. There wasn’t really any cultural excuse for it, not any more from what I could see at least. I mean, no one that ever came to visit us brought _flowers_. Also, since according to kaa-san the flower language was a staple for all well educated women, it really made the whole code thing redundant. Not a code if every woman on the street knew it.

Since I _was_ reborn and I _was_ a child again, I figured that I might as well hit every childhood dream of mine. Especially since I was now in a world where kids at the age of twelve and thirteen were released into the world with deadly ninja-weapons. Enjoy childhood while I could because it was a _given_ that I was going to the ninja academy when I was old enough. Pretty much everyone in the Uchiha clan did. It was almost a requirement. Doubly so if you were the child of the Clan Head.

So, before my grim future as a child-soldier came about, I decided to make good use of my second childhood to have some fun. The Uchiha compound was too dull anyway. And so began Uchiha Chiyomi’s reign of terror in the Uchiha Compound. That’s what I was going to call it anyway.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uchiha Chiyomi's Reign of Terror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap this chapter was longer than expected.   
> Leave a review? Please? Pretty please? *Puppy eyes*

“CHIYOMI! GET BACK HERE!” Yelled Uchiha Police Guy. I think his name was Inabi? No, Inabi was the one with the off-brown hair and the squarer jaw. This was his brother Ichijou. Thing about Uchiha. They all looked slightly alike so telling them apart when you live in a place that had about a hundred of them was a bit of an issue. As for the reason he was yelling at me…

“Chicken!” I shouted laughing as I ran as fast as my little legs to carry me. The reason I had shouted chicken? Well, because he was covered in paint and chicken feathers. Yes ladies and gentlemen. Me, big tough Marine had done what every child dreamed of doing. Covering someone with paint and chicken feathers. I honestly hadn’t expected it to work that well. I mean, you would think that something like that wouldn’t work on ninjas right? Apparently, it did. And it worked _well_.

I rounded a corner shrieking with laughter which killed all semblance of stealth but that was okay. It wasn’t like I had any illusions of getting away with it scot free. I just wanted to parade him around as much of the Uchiha Clan compound as I could before he caught up. I was making pretty good progress actually.

So of course it was then that I’m snagged by the back of my collar and dangled like a stray puppy in the air. 

I’m promptly dragged back to my house and Ichijou raps on the door brisk and annoyed. A paint-soaked feather is jostled from his arm in that movement and splats to the floor leaving a bright yellow splotch. I’d only been able to get ahold of white feathers so I’d had to go with yellow paint. The feathers had been from three pillows that I’d sneakily taken apart in my room.

Kaa-san opened up face already irate. She knew. She _always_ knew.

 “Hi Kaa-san.” I said waving and was fixed with an irritated look.

“Again Chiyomi? That’s the third time this week!” She scolded me and I grinned.

“The third time they _caught_ me this week.” I corrected. The adults shared a look over my head. Everyone knew that I’d been the one to put food dye down the pipes causing all the taps and faucets to spew out bright purple for _days_ but they had no evidence. Everyone _also_ knew I was the reason there had suddenly been an increase in stray cats in the Uchiha compound because there’d suddenly been mounds of catnip everywhere but no one could prove it was me. And _someone_ had switched out the hard wooden training targets for large amounts of half-dried white glue causing more than one Uchiha to lose a batch of training weapons. They all probably knew it was me but since they had no proof, I got to cackle like a maniac with no negative consequences. Ah childhood.

“I’m sorry about her Ichijou… I don’t know what went wrong, she was the sweetest little baby…” Kaa-san lamented and Ichijou just dumped me onto the doorstep.

“Don’t do it again.” He said fixing me with a firm glare. I wasn’t intimidated. Giant chicken man trying to threaten me? Yeah no.

“Okay.” I agreed and looking rather exasperated Ichijou turned to wash the paint and feathers off of him. I giggled because his shoes made a sort of _splooch_ sound whenever he took a step.

“You’re grounded young lady.” Kaa-san said sternly and I pouted. That was the third time this week.

Sasuke saw my pout and laughed.

“What did you do? Go swimming again?” He asked grinning. Kaa-san had _not_ been amused by my achievement of swimming faster than a fish in the Naka River. Tou-san had been furious because I’d nearly drowned.

“Nope. Chicken feathers and paint!” I said with a broad grin and Sasuke stared.

“Chi-chan. You’re weird.” He finally said and I stuck my tongue out at him. He huffed. You’d think that since I _was_ over thirty, I’d be too old to pull pranks. But no, I was not. Also, Sasuke was shaping up to be something of a training fanatic. Kid was doing great.

The next day I gave the police force a rest and made confetti out of rice paper. Kaa-san thought that I was doing origami. I didn’t tell her that I was planning to use the paper and dump it into the koi ponds to give them some color. We still made origami animals though. Kaa-san had quite the repertoire of them. My first crane had somehow turned into a wonky camel-looking thing. Don’t ask, I don’t know how I managed that either.

I got grounded again the day after because Tou-san found the confetti in his koi pond.

“Chiyomi.” He said sternly and I blinked up at him innocently. The pond was a scattered rainbow and it looked really cool. I think the koi were even enjoying their new environment.

“Yes Tou-san.”

“You’re grounded.” He proclaimed. I pouted.

“But I made the pond all pretty!” I complained and was shot a rather unimpressed look.

“Grounded.” He said again walking off. To gather the cleaning equipment for the pond probably. Tou-san pretty much considered the koi beloved family pets. No, I’m serious. He even had special koi-food for them and he fed them a good hearty meal at least once a day. They were rather massive. Well, I was three so I guess any fish short of a sardine would seem massive. A traditional man my Tou-san. Most other families had cats or even dogs. But no, that would be too _mainstream_ for the Clan Head. He had to have fancy colorful fish.

I was made to clean the pond and all other ponds. Pity. They had been pretty.

When Itachi came home he looked at me, looked at the pond and then sighed.

“Grounded again Chi-chan?” He asked sounding amused and I grinned.

“Worth it.” I proclaimed and got a chuckle and head ruffle for it. Itachi seemed to have a sixth sense for when I was grounded. It was uncanny. He’d walk in, take a look at me and then pronounce that I’d been grounded. He wasn’t just pulling it out of his ass either because he was _always_ right. Geniuses. Honestly.

Talking about geniuses, apparently while Itachi was a special little snowflake, he wasn’t _the_ special little snowflake. There was another genius in the Uchiha Clan by the name of Uchiha Shisui.

Itachi really liked Shisui who was a couple of years older and not at all bitter about how Itachi was blowing _his_ records out of the water.

Shisui didn’t come around to play often at all. In fact, that had happened oh… _never_. It was kind of sad because they were acting like adults when they hadn’t even hit _double digits_ yet. It wasn’t even their fault, they just weren’t ever… allowed to be kids. I felt that it had been a terrible decision to let Itachi out of the academy so early. It was missions and training all day every day and while he still played with us every now and again, it wasn’t like he was playing as a _child_. There wasn’t anyone standing over his shoulder with a stick to beat him if he slacked off but social pressure was a frightful thing. Itachi was what _everyone_ talked about when they talked about our family. Hell, when they talked _to_ him they were talking about their expectations of the poor kid. It’s no wonder that he hung out with Shisui more than anyone else actually. The two sort of understood each other. They could relate.

Itachi’s situation was also a very good incentive for me to _never_ stick out my neck as a genius. For one, that would leave Sasuke out in the cold and probably forever brand him as the ‘useless’ one of the family which I did not want at all. For another, that amount of expectation was not only ridiculous but just plain… unhealthy. It was my goal to do stupid childish stuff until I was too old in this body or I got disowned. Since I was the clan head’s only daughter and what a _Scandal_ it would be for me to be disowned, my poor parents would just have to wait a few decades.

As long as I didn’t do something _too_ damaging, I should be fine. So naturally, the next week I came home with large potentially poisonous mushrooms.

“Chiyomi! Put those down right now!” Kaa-san yelled at me at the door and I pouted. They were awesome mushrooms and I wasn’t going to give them up.  

“What?” I asked looking at the mushrooms in my hand. I had found them in an Uchiha training ground and they were a very vibrant purple and blue. You know, like the types of mushrooms you don’t see unless you’re in a _Japanese cartoon_ “I’m not gonna _eat_ them.”

I was being childish, not moronic. Also, unlike Sasuke, I did _not_ have an oral fixation. Yeah, the kid was still sticking his hands in his mouth. Thankfully it has now downgraded from the entire _fist_ to a finger or two. Small mercies. Sometimes I thought that Sasuke was doing great, other times, I worried for that child.

“Chiyomi!” Kaa-san said sternly and I dropped the mushrooms onto the grass pouting. “Come inside and wash your hands quickly. Those mushrooms are poisonous.”

Oh.

I was then hustled to the bathroom and promptly scrubbed down.

“You’re grounded.” Kaa-san declared when I was all clean and in no danger of killing myself.

“Why!? I just thought they looked interesting.” I grumbled. I was _not_ stupid enough to eat a random mushroom I’d found on the ground. What did my mother take me for?

“Grounded Chiyomi.”

An idiot obviously. I pouted.

“What did you do this time Chi-chan?” Itachi asked over dinner highly amused. My shenanigans were basically the nightly entertainment in this family.

“I bought home poisonous mushrooms.” I admitted. Tou-san choked on his rice. Guess Kaa-san hadn’t told him then.

“Chiyomi! Where did you get poisonous mushrooms?!” He demanded still choking a little bit and I perked up.

“The west training grounds. You should have seen them Tou-san! They were all purple and blue! It was so cool.” I said grinning and Tou-san seemed to sag in defeat.

“Hey! How come you didn’t show me?!” Sasuke complained pouting at being left out.

“Kaa-san took them.” I lamented and Sasuke peered up at Kaa-san. I cast pleading puppy eyes at her too. Kaa-san caved within _seconds_. She sighed.

“I’ll show you after dinner but only if you promise not to touch them alright?” Kaa-san asked strictly to maintain that parental authority. Even Itachi nodded. What kid didn’t want to see colorful mushrooms in real life?

After dinner Kaa-san took the mushrooms out from a jar she had put them in. Was it rude to put poisonous substances in the trash? Maybe? I mean… think about the poor garbage guy if we were allowed to do that, the hazard pay would go through the roof.  

“Cool!” Sasuke said looking at the vibrant colors. Even Itachi seemed impressed.

“This is quite the find Chi-chan.” He praised and I beamed in pride.

Tou-san obviously caught that and sternly cleared his throat with a pointed look. We sighed.

“We promise not to go poisonous mushroom hunting.” We chorused together looking down. Tou-san nods in satisfaction at the promise. He also seemed to wonder how his life had come to this point. Bet the prim and stern head of the Uchiha clan never thought he’d have to tell his kids that they weren’t allowed to go _looking_ for poisonous fungi.

“Good. And Chiyomi. You’re grounded.”

“Kaa-san already did that.” I chirp with a grin. Tou-san showing that he _did_ have a deeply buried and very dry sense of humor didn’t skip a beat.

“Consider yourself double-grounded.”

“Tou-san!” I splutter because… what? That wasn’t a thing! Well Tou-san was evidently _making_ it a thing because he just walked off as Sasuke burst out laughing with Itachi.

“I think that’s the first time anyone’s been _double_ grounded!” Sasuke laughed and I huffed.

“Ita-nii, Sasu-nii… you’re mean.” I decided and the two boys looked very amused.

“Then don’t dig up poisonous mushrooms.” Itachi said very amused. I shrugged.

“Eh, worth it.”

For the next week my entire family conspired against me to put me through training hell since I was grounded. Seriously, Tou-san had me running laps and Kaa-san even broke her pattern of beating manners into my head to literally kicking my ass at taijutsu.

Turns out, Kaa-san wasn’t just an ex-ninja housewife, she was an ex- _jounin_ housewife. Yeah. There was a difference. A very, very _big_ difference.

Admittedly I learned some rather invaluable lessons from that month-long impromptu boot-camp. Like never piss off Kaa-san. Ever. She will _destroy_ you, then resurrect you with delicious food, and destroy you all over again. She’d been going _easy_ on me.

I was betting that Itachi got his genius brain from _her_ side of the family.

Itachi was even prompted to take me out for a bout of training with Shisui.

“Oh, so this is the Chi-chan that I’ve heard so much about!” Shisui greeted with a smile. He’s more expressive than most Uchiha. That was a little bit of a shock, I’d kind of pegged Shisui to be a quiet serene type like Itachi. Which now that I thought about it, was biased as all hell since I’d never _met_ the guy and Itachi hardly talked about him. Sorry Shisui.

“Pleased to meet you.” I say because it was the polite thing to say and bowed a short little bow.

“Kaa-san asked me to train Chi-chan today.” Itachi says as an explanation and Shisui arched an eyebrow.

“What about the other kid? Didn’t you have _two_ siblings?” He asks and Itachi nods.

“Sasuke didn’t get grounded.” Itachi says dryly and Shisui obviously having heard all the stories, burst out laughing.

“So what did you do this time? Glue everyone’s sandals to the floor?” Shisui snickers and that actually wasn’t a bad idea at all. Itachi groans.

“Please don’t encourage her Shisui-san.”

“Too late.” I sing already wondering which type of glue I should use and Itachi gives me a dry look.

“You’re grounded.”

“Not forever.”

Shisui laughs and Itachi just shakes his head.

“Alright you tiny-terror. How about I teach you some kunai techniques and you don’t cause mass hysteria again hm?” Shisui says with a smirk and I nod.

“I’ve never caused mass hysteria but okay.” I say immediately because throwing pointy things was something I was _good_ at and let myself be good at. Sasuke’s got the Swift Paw market cornered and I’m making it _stay_ that way. The kid needed some praise or else he was growing up a dick.

“Chi-chan. Your prank with the pipes caused mass hysteria for a _week_.” Itachi reminded me and I batted my eyelashes at him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Ita-nii. I don’t know where the main pipeline is.”

Itachi didn’t dignify that with a response and Shisui snickers. I liked the guy already. Itachi needed someone to cheer him up every now and again. He was too serious for someone who hadn’t lived half a century. He acted like it though. Itachi took the term ‘old soul’ to extremes. And yes I know I shouldn’t talk.

“Alright you tiny terror, watch.” Shisui said through his snickers and held out a hand. He closed his fist and when he opened it, there were kunai clenched tightly between his fingers. They’d just appeared like magic. Full sized kunai.

Yeah, kunai came in different sizes, it kind of surprised me too because it was one of those _iconic_ ninja things that even _I’d_ known about. I hadn’t even thought there were varying sizes but there were. There was still the standard sizes though.

The standard sized kunai was about a four-inch blade and another three inches for the handle.

It was quite obviously a slight of hand trick but it was _cool_. Really cool.

“I promise not to mess with the pipes if you teach me how to do that.” I say immediately and Itachi stares at me and Shisui laughs.

“You didn’t cave to Tou-san’s scolding but you cave to kunai tricks?” He asks me with a little uptick in his mouth which was the Itachi version of a full blown laugh. I nod.

“Well, yeah.” I say and point to Shisui “That’s cool.”

“Oh I like her.” Shisui says puffing up and Itachi’s big brother switch gets flicked instantly.

“No you don’t.” He says immediately and _very_ seriously. It takes me a second to process that and then I burst out laughing. Itachi then turns to me and points. “You didn’t understand that Chi-chan. You’re four. You’re not allowed to understand that.”

I nod just to spare my poor brother _that_ can of worms and get my laughter down to stifled giggles.

“Awww don’t be like that Itachi.” Shisui snickers with a gleam in his eye “You’ll have to hand her over sooner or-“

“ _Shisui-san_.” Itachi says and ohhh boy that was quite a glare.

Shisui shut up immediately and held his hands up in surrender.

Deciding to save the only guy who could teach me that cool trick, I tug on Itachi’s shirt.

“Cool kunai trick?” I prompt and give him my best puppy eyes. That tactic was highly successful and Itachi caves immediately.

He hands over a kunai for me to practice with and a snickering Shisui takes me through the motions slowly. It’s all in the sleeves and the flick of the wrist.

By the time that little ‘training’ session was over, I hadn’t gotten it down but now I was invested in it damn it. So I bugged Itachi into letting me keep that kunai to practice with. He let me keep it. He probably shouldn’t have since it was _live steel_. You know, the sharp kind. But hey, ninjas, it was perfectly acceptable in this world to give four year olds knives. Sharp knives.

Well I wasn’t exactly _complaining_?

My grounding was up not that long after and I _still_ hadn’t gotten that kunai trick down. Which was kind of frustrating. Shisui had made it look _easy_. Damned genius ninjas.

But since I was once again a free woman, I decided to do something to spruce up the place.

It was that decision that led me to stand rather brazenly outside the Uchiha compound walls while _painting_ on them. With my hands. In solid black ink.

I was getting lots of stares and whispers as I shoved my entire hand into the paint bucket and back out to swipe shaky letters on the wall. Kaa-san had _just_ started me on my reading and writing so I wasn’t too proficient. Not too proficient but I could make them semi-legible and I kind of knew how to write my full name.

So under every red and white Uchiha fan, I wrote **‘U CHI HA** ’ in black ink.

To make things even funnier, no one _questioned_ me about it for a good hour. Then, someone did.

“What exactly are you doing?” Someone asked from behind me and I looked around. It was a weird sight. Silver hair and head band over one eye with a mask over the lower half of his face. I couldn’t help but stare.

“What are you supposed to be?” I blurted out and then glanced around for my Kaa-san on instinct. If she’d heard me being that rude to a non-Uchiha stranger, I’d be in for _another_ lecture on manners. All while seated in seiza which is kind of like torturing yourself. But in my defense, I’d only blurted it out because they guy seemed _familiar_.

“A ninja.” The guy deadpanned “And what are you supposed to be?”

“Upgrading!” I declared with a grin pointing to my current work. The guy looked to the wall a little wide eyed. I eyed my work too. I’d started from the left-most end of the wall and I was about five feet and six Uchiha fans from being done. It… it looked like a child had gone a little too crazy with the paint. Also, now that I really looked at it, I was quite sure that my ‘chi’ character was the wrong way around. Oops.

The ninja tore his eyes away from the wall and starts to stare at _me_.

 “You’re going to get into trouble.” He stated and I shrugged.

“Worth it.” I said and resumed painting.

“You’re going to keep painting?” He asked a little incredulous.

“Well, yeah. No one’s come to arrest me yet.” I pointed out like it was a perfectly acceptable reason for my continued defacement of the Uchiha clan walls.

“You’re a weird kid you know that.” The ninja said dryly and I grinned.

“Yup.” Yeah I was a weird kid.

“CHIYOMI! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!” Uchiha police had arrived. Ah, good old Saito if I wasn’t wrong. He had greying hair and a rather stern face and was coming briskly towards me.

“Time to run!” I said shoving the bucket of ink into ninja-guy’s hands and making a break for it. I think ninja-guy spluttered and flailed but I couldn’t be quite sure. I was too busy sprinting through the Uchiha main strip shrieking with laughter. High speed chases. Always a work out. Which I think was the only reason I’d been allowed to keep causing havoc in the Uchiha compounds. Running was _totally_ training.

“GET BACK HERE CHIYOMI!”

“Never!”

I was promptly caught and dragged to were Tou-san was standing very unimpressed at the Uchiha clan compound gates bucket of soapy water and sponge in hand. Ninja-guy wasn’t there anymore.

“You’re grounded.” He informed me handing over the cleaning supplies “And no dinner until you have this all cleaned up.”

I looked to all the fans that I had ‘upgraded’ and then shrugged.

“Worth it.” I grinned and Tou-san sighed shaking his head.

“Just get this cleaned up Chiyomi.” He sighed and I nodded.

“Okay!”

It was cleaned up twenty minutes later. The ink I’d used washed out great. Hey, I wasn’t stupid. Of course it wasn’t allowed to stay. I wasn’t going to make clean up _hard_ because who _else_ was going to clean it up? Some poor police force rookie? I didn’t think so. Say what you like about my awkward hedgehog of a father but he knew how to teach his kids responsibility. You make the mess, you clean it up. I liked that about my Tou-san.

I also liked the fact that although he had a face that was pretty much made out of stone, he _did_ have some deeply buried sense of humor. If things _really_ amused him, he’d sometimes even let me _keep doing_ it even though he probably shouldn’t.

Having Sasuke around to double up on the puppy eyes helped too.

Which was why when summer rolled around and temperatures skyrocketed, I had a brilliant idea that I just _had_ to drag Sasuke into.

“Hey, Sasu-nii. Wanna do something _really cool_?” I ask with a grin. Sasuke stopped mid-shurikin-throw and turned cautiously. His arm was still raised and he sort of took stock of what he was seeing.

I held up a black baking tray eagerly and grinned. Sasuke lowered his arm.

“Is this going to get _me_ grounded?” He asked cautiously. Sasuke had never been grounded and he was _proud_ of that fact. Why I don’t know, I was the only one in this family that ever got grounded.

“Not if Kaa-san doesn’t catch us.” I say eagerly bouncing on my toes. If I could get Sasuke in on it, then there was no chance of a grounding. Double puppy eyes were a trump card in this family and since I’d discovered it, I planned on _abusing_ it.

Sasuke glances around suspiciously like he thinks Kaa-san would just pop out of the bushes and lecture us. She didn’t.

“She’s not home?” Sasuke asks as hope shines in his eyes and I shook my head.

“Nope. Gone to visit granny Haru.”

“Who?”

Sasuke wasn’t being an insensitive dick, he really wasn’t. The Uchiha numbered at _least_ a hundred and asking a four-year-old to remember all of them just wasn’t happening. Apparently, this was the Clan in a population _slump_. Not a slump for long I was sure, there’s quite the baby boom going on right now. Why no one told me and it wasn’t like I could just _ask_. One, it would be considered rude to ask why so many people were getting pregnant all of a sudden and two, I was four. I wasn’t supposed to know where babies came from yet.

“Granny Haru from that dango shop Ita-nii likes. She broke her… uh…” Actually, what did that old lady break again? “She broke something. Kaa-san went to do her rounds.”

“You forgot what she broke.” Sasuke says dryly and looks like he’s about to start laughing. I stuck my tongue out at him.

“It’s not my fault! Kaa-san used adult-words!” I huff and then hold up the tray. “So you in or not?”

“What am I going to be ‘in’ for?” Sasuke sighs and I grin.

“You know how it’s _really, really, really_ hot?” I ask and Sasuke arches an eyebrow and squints at the sun.

“Yes. I noticed.”

I ignore that.

“Well, since it’s really, really, really hot, the roof gets really hot too.” I say and Sasuke stares at me like I’m a moron. “So _that_ means, we can fry an egg.”

Sasuke blinks. Rolls it over in his head going by his scrunched up nose, and then blinks again.

“Nope. I still don’t get it.”

I point to sun.

“Hot sun.”

I point to the tray.

“Hot metal tray. Add egg and?”

Realization dawns. Sasuke stares.

“That’s crazy. There’s no way it’ll work.” He splutters and I grin.

“Wanna bet?”

“Kaa-san’s going to _kill_ us if we climb onto the roof.”

“It’ll be a good training opportunity. Sneaky.” I say like a wise old man and Sasuke showing that he was a smart cookie doesn’t buy it. I change tactics.  “Also, think about how _cool_ it’ll be. Pleaseeeee.”

The thought of the bragging rights outweighed the risk of death by Kaa-san.

This place was hot in the summers. Sweltering, peeling sun-burn hot. Not desert hot but… Australia-hot? We were in an area that was nearly tropical but… _not_. I don’t know, it’s weird. Also, I hadn’t seen much of this world so for all I knew, we just got lucky geographically. Everywhere else could be a fiery pit of death and I would believe it I was _that_ ignorant about this world.

But since it was so hot, every kid liked to complain that they could fry an egg on the streets. They’d complain that their rubber soles were melting into the ground. Since no one had _actually_ fried an egg on the streets let alone the black _rooves_ , we’d get bragging rights. And clan-wide fame.

Going by the sudden eagerness in Sasuke’s face, he was _so_ in.

Mission accomplished.

“Let’s go. But we gotta be quick. I’ll get the eggs.” Sasuke says dashing into the house and I cackle. Welcome to the dark side brother mine. Welcome to the dark side.

It took a little bit of inventive path finding to get up onto the roof. We had to move a boulder from the rock garden to get into a large tree that was right up against a wall. Then I inched across towards the roof while Sasuke held the stuff. There was a bit of a moment where I _nearly_ fell off the end but I didn’t and Sasuke chucked me the tray and eggs before slowly crawling over onto the roof.

Once we were all safely settled, I set out the tray and we waited.

It took a good hour for the tray to be deemed hot enough and Sasuke eagerly cracked the eggs messily onto the tray. Sasuke wouldn’t make a good cook but hey, at least the egg was spread thin. Maybe it’ll fry faster that way.

For a while nothing happened and Sasuke wasn’t the only one disappointed.

Then at the fifteen minute mark, we whooped because it’d started _smoking_.

It was the whooping that got us busted.

Tou-san was suddenly standing there on the roof with us looming over our crouched forms highly unimpressed. He cleared his throat and we stiffened. Then we slowly peeked over.

“What do you two think you’re doing?” Tou-san asks sternly and Sasuke elbows me.

“Testing an idea?” I try and Tou-san looks at the smoking egg and sighs.

“Chiyomi, are you frying an egg on our roof?” He asks like he doesn’t want to believe his eyes and I look back at the egg.

“Bragging rights?” I ask because hey, if it worked on Sasuke, it might work on Tou-san.

Just then the egg starts to honest to god _sizzle_ and even Tou-san leans over to get a better look. After a while the sizzling slows.

“Chiyomi, you’re grounded.” Tou-san says and I huff.

“But Sasu-nii’s here too!”

“HEY!”

“It wasn’t Sasuke’s idea.” Tou-san said with full confidence and he wasn’t _wrong_. I look back at the egg mournfully.

“Can we finish though? Pease?” I ask because we were _so close_.

Tou-san seems to hesitate and I could see him cracking. I quickly nudge Sasuke and we both give him our best puppy eyes.

“Please Tou-san?” We ask together in that wheedling voice all toddlers had. Tou-san caves like a poorly made house of cards.

He sits down with a sigh and gathers us up into his lap. Probably so that we didn’t roll down the roof or something. Sasuke squeals in delight and I cheer.

We just spent the rest of that afternoon sitting on the roof during a sweltering hot day staring at an egg.

The next day we were busted by Kaa-san because sunburn was very obvious and even _Tou-san_ got scolded.

I was only grounded for a couple of days and once those days were up, I went straight for the river. There’s a rather large river that cut through quite a bit of the village. The Naka river, and a bit of it flowed through the Uchiha clan lands. More than deep enough for me to swim in.

Kaa-san wasn’t every enthusiastic about my new source of entertainment and she was utterly exasperated the day I brought home a _fish_ from the river.

 “Chiyomi, that had better not be one of your father’s koi.” Kaa-san told me when I stood there soaking wet.

“Nope! Found it in the Naka river!” I proclaimed holding up the flopping fish. It was a small one, black and white and splotched with red. Kaa-san sighed.

“Go put it in the koi pond then.” She said and I grinned and dumped the newest koi into the pond. The others sort of circled around it poking at the new kid before losing interest and swimming off. The newest koi went to hid under a lily pad.

“Chiyomi! What did you do to my koi?” Tou-san demanded when he fed his fish that evening. Figured he’d notice. I peeked out from the living room ready to run for it. The _last_ time I’d gone swimming in the Naka river a year ago he’d been _furious_. It was actually the only time I’d seen him so mad. Which was fair, since Itachi had to haul me out. Because I’d underestimated the river and nearly gotten myself killed. Needless to say, Tou-san had _not_ been pleased.

“Nothing. I just got you a new one.” I said as innocent as possible and Tou-san eyed the new addition. Finally he sighed.

“If you don’t tell me how you got it, I won’t ground you.” He told me firmly before going back to feeding his fish. I grinned.

“Deal!”

I then legged it because I wasn’t about to push it.

Since summer was in full swing, everything was colorful and I was eagerly awaiting the summer festival to start. We’d only just been allowed to go last year and Kaa-san hadn’t let go of our hands but it had been _awesome_.

But since the festival was probably months away, I figured that I’d throw my own little party. And deface the Uchiha main gates while I was at it because no one had done _that_ before.

I was going to get into _so_ much trouble. But I had zero regrets.

It went down easier than I’d expected. I mean, a six meter long string of paper flowers wasn’t exactly easy to _hide_ but I was in luck. An uncle… cousin… uh, _someone_ had managed to land themselves in hospital and since Tou-san told us about it, that meant we were going to visit some time soon. Which was why the paper flowers went relatively unquestioned.

The wire to string them together had to be sourced from Itachi. I had a feeling that _he_ knew what was going on because he handed a full spool of it over.

“Try not to get grounded again Chi-chan.” Itachi told me very much amused and I nod.

“I promise to try.” I say and we _both_ know that I was _so_ going to be grounded for this. I grinned and skipped off.

The flower chain made, I waited until Kaa-san was busy doing the laundry before sneaking out nearly tripping over the chain of paper flowers on my way through the door.

That ruckus brought Sasuke.

“Chi-chan, what are you doing?” He asks like he doesn’t want to know and I pull a length of the flower chain out of my eyes. Since I was tiny and the chain was six feet long, I’d resorted to wrapping it around myself to carry it all. I probably looked very colorful and very ridiculous.

“Decorating. Wanna help?” I offer holding out my arms, my very colorful arms covered in flowers. Sasuke promptly flees. Fine.

I make it to the front gates and I’d timed it well because it was that lazy hour in the afternoon where no one does much. I get myself un-tangled from all the flowers and I’m almost done when I see someone staring at me. In fact, he’s standing smack bang in the middle of the road staring. Kind of hard to miss. It’s that one-eyed ninja guy. The weirdo that seemed familiar. Maybe I’d seen him around or something.

 “Hi ninja-guy.” I greeted unwrapping the last of the flower chain. The guy did a double take and stared at me.

“What did you call me?” He asked looking very bemused.

“What? It’s not like I know your name.” I huffed. The guy looked at me, weighed the pros and cons of being called ‘ninja-guy’ and finally relented.

“I am Hatake Kakashi.” He introduced pointing to himself. I could forgive the childish action. I _was_ four after all. Still…

“I am Uchiha Chiyomi.” I said matching him tone for tone and pointing to myself. He spluttered and I grinned. “So wha’cha doing?”

“I was just passing through. What are _you_ doing? Painting the walls again?” Kakashi asked and I grinned.

“Of course not. I already did that. I’m gonna add flowers to the main gates!” I proclaimed. The guy stared. He looked at the pile of paper flowers on the ground, then he looked at the main gates of the Uchiha Clan. They were… prim and proper? Imposing? It’s part of the walls that surround the Uchiha lands and there’s no _door_ , just cloth that’s hung at the top of the gates bearing the Uchiha crest. The cloth is black and it’s a very proper looking set of gates.

The flowers at my feet are all colors of the rainbow and some are even sparkly. Origami paper for children everybody. They were so colorful. And they clashed something horrific with the whole ‘professional’ atmosphere the Uchiha had going for them.

Hatake Kakashi seemed to be in some sort of mute shock.

“You want to add flowers to the Uchiha Compound’s main gates.” He deadpanned and I nodded.

“Yup. Wanna help?”

“No.”

“Fine. Your loss.” I shrugged and quickly ducked inside to grab the rope and stool. I wasn’t tall enough to hang the paper flowers but that didn’t mean I didn’t have any other ideas. I still had good aim after all. The string of paper flowers were attached to rope and the rope was attached to kunai. The process was simple. I threw the kunai over the top of the gates, pulled it down and repeated the process. I just had to anchor one end to the ground first. Easily done by stabbing another kunai into the ground and using the handy hoop at the end of the handle. The kunai were sourced from my practice stash.

As promised, Kakashi didn’t help and just watched in what I thought was morbid fascination as I made the Uchiha main gates look all colorful and flowery.

“Chiyomi!” Oops. Uchiha police. It’s grumpy Isao again looking like he’s ready to drag me off by the back of my shirt.  “What do you think you’re going?”

“Upgrading.” I said pointing to the mostly-finished flowers. Isao stares at the flowers and I think some part of him wants to cry at the sight. He glares at me.

“Your parents will hear about this.” He says sternly and I do my best pout at him.

 “But I made it look all pretty!” I whine. Isao was not moved. He just glowered. I changed tactics. “Can I finish?”

Isao stares at me like I was some sort of alien and then pinches the bridge of his nose letting out a long sigh. The Hatake guy was inching away slowly. Isao looks to the sky as if asking heaven for strength and then very purposefully strides through the flowery gates and into the clan compound. I grin taking that for a ‘yes’. It probably wasn’t but Isao wasn’t here to tell me otherwise.

 “How are you not disowned?” Kakashi asked looking at me bewildered after Isao was out of earshot and I grinned.

“Coz the clan head’s my Tou-san.” I proclaimed and Kakashi stared.

“You’re Fugaku’s kid?” He asked and I grinned.

“Yup! Sure you don’t wanna help?”

Kakashi actually sighed and leapt on top of the Uchiha gates.

“Throw it up.” He grumbled as if admitting defeat and I was honestly surprised by that.

“Awesome!”

It went much quicker after that and Hatake legged it after it was finished. To make things better, I hadn’t even been caught.

Until dinner that is.

“I saw the flowers outside today. Your work?” Itachi asked that night at dinner and I beamed.

“Yup! I made it look pretty!”

Tou-san didn’t even scold me anymore. He just sighed. He didn’t even look surprised.

“Chiyomi.” Kaa-san lamented shaking her head “I should have known that you weren’t making flowers for Yato at the hospital.”

Ohhh so his name was Yato. Still no clue what his relation to us was though. But he’d lost an arm the previous mission that he’d been on. Ninja career officially over.

“I _did_ make some for Yato-ji-san.” I said, when in doubt, call any male relative ‘uncle’ it generally worked. “They’re in my room.”

Kaa-san perked up at that and Tou-san nodded at me. See, I could be responsible. Me big mature adult.

“Will Yato-ji-san be okay?” Sasuke asked in concern and it was Tou-san that answered.

“He was injured badly Sasuke. But Uchiha are strong. He will no longer be a ninja but he is still Uchiha. We look after our own. He will be well cared for.” Tou-san said and Sasuke nodded evidently taking the words to heart.

I just hoped that Tou-san was right. Fleur’s world had a worrying amount of veterans committing suicide after being wounded in action. It had been a very real issue in that world and I wondered if it was an issue in this world also. Maybe in this world they’d have better mental health services? I mean, I’d seen Itachi spit out honest to god _fireballs_ that could raze a house without a problem. Surely they didn’t want someone able to do _that_ mentally unstable? I mean… that just seemed… stupid?

But hey, Japanese cartoon. Maybe things like depression and PTSD just didn’t exist? Or were less prevalent? Dear lord I hoped so.

In other news, we did go to the hospital. Since it involved going _outside_ the clan lands, I got all dolled up and remained on my best behavior. My parents and I had an understanding of sorts. Out in the main village I won’t do stupid stuff and be a good little Uchiha. In return, I could do what I liked inside the clan compounds. It worked as a system.

We visited Yato, there was the general ‘get well soons’ and the ‘glad to have you back alive’ lines and I even gave him the paper flowers that I made.

On the way home we got quite a few questions for curious shop-keepers if the Uchiha were going to organize some kind of festival because of the flower decorations at the main gates. Tou-san had choked a little the first time someone asked but seemed to be actually considering it.

After staggering around like a drunk though. Kaa-san seemed to get a kick out of it.

A month later at the end of summer the Uchiha district announced a one-day-only festival to celebrate the end of summer or more traditionally known as the Fire Season. Apparently Tou-san had thought that it was a good idea. Either that or Kaa-san twisted his arm until he’d backed down. I was betting on Kaa-san.

Mainly because she was all gun-ho about the whole thing.

She _said_ that as the Matriarch of the Uchiha Clan, it fell to her to do all the preparations but I was calling bull on that. She wasn’t taking over because Tou-san couldn’t do it since he was so busy at the police station. She’d booted Tou-san to the police station and had taken over with hostile force.

Don’t mess with jounin ninja guys. Even if that Jounin ninja decided to retire from active service to take care of her kids. Just don’t do it. Look at Tou-san. He was a smart man.

Sasuke was rather perplexed at what all the fuss was about because we’d never had any sort of festival before and Itachi was roped into helping like all the other Uchiha Genin. He might be the clan’s genius but he wasn’t spared from the grunt work.

I’d seen Shisui lugging logs and he’d playfully told me that his predicament was all my fault.

“It’ll be good for you. Like training.” I’d told him not at all repentant because now we got to go to _two_ festivals. How sweet is that?

It was probably the only reason that none of the Uchiha kids were complaining about being used as free manual labor. It was just _cool_ to be able to _make a festival_ in what was essentially your own back yard. Everyone got more and more excited as the days went on.

The Uchiha compound had a main strip. It was a place that was _technically_ open to the public but not many non-Uchiha ventured into the district anyway. Still, the strip was filled with Uchiha-owned stores that sold everything from ninja tools to the famous Uchiha Senbi. It was sort of decided on the grounds that it was ‘bloody obvious’ that the main strip would be where the festival would be held.

In the span of a week decorations were put up along with lanterns. I was tasked with making more paper flowers with the rest of the artistically gifted kids as well as other decorations. Sasuke was running around wide-eyed with the more… ‘exercise prone’ kids being used as gophers. Small stalls were built and way too much food was prepared. The ninjas shipped the heavy stuff and Kaa-san was having the time of her life with plans and diagrams.

By the end of the week the entire village was excited because _Uchiha_ were throwing a festival. A festival that was heavily advertised. Apparently Tou-san decided to use us kids as advertising material. I had made hundreds of paper flowers that were attached to flyers to hand out with Sasuke and every Uchiha child under the age of ten at the Konoha Market districts.

Turns out, cute Uchiha kids drew people in.

On the night of the festival the Uchiha clan compound had never been so packed with people. There was a lot of chattering, noise and the smell of good cooking food. Even weapons were on sale. Couldn’t have a festival in a village of ninjas without a few weapon stalls. There were candy stalls too which I eagerly hit up. We still had to pay but Sasuke and I were allowed to wonder around with Itachi and do what we wished. Itachi was deemed responsible enough to make sure two toddlers didn’t do anything stupid during a festival packed with people. Since he was a genius, and since I wasn’t _actually_ a toddler, we managed to keep Sasuke on the straight and narrow with our combined force. If I was an _actual_ toddler then Itachi would’ve been well and truly screwed.

Being the kids that we were, we ate candy, looked at stalls that had toys, ate more candy, played a few games in which we lost spectacularly at and ate some more candy. It was great.

By the end of the night the Uchiha showed off their pyrotechnics and shot a few fireworks up into the sky. From my point of view, it ended very well.

The cleanup was a nightmare. You wouldn’t believe the amount of litter on the ground.

Within a week there was no sign that the Uchiha compound had hosted a festival at all. Even my flowers were taken down. Since I missed the color, I decided to rectify that. With paint. And Disney references.

“Chiyomi. Did you _paint_ all the roses in the compound red?” Kaa-san asked incredulously and I grinned splattered with red paint and way too proud of myself.

“Yup.” I said immediately.

“You’re grounded. Go get cleaned up.” Kaa-san sighed. She’d officially given up on the lectures.

“Worth it!” I declared jogging to the bathroom to get all the paint off of me.

I was made to clean up my mess. And then Tou-san grounded me too when he found out.

I spent the time training with Sasuke and plotting my next big prank. So… business as usual.

“Chicken run!” I whooped as I raced down the main street of the Uchiha Compound chasing a group of fifteen chickens as they squawked, flapped and created general chaos. They were prompted into motion by a branch of willow that I’d broken off.

“CHIYOMI!” Uchiha police. Tadao if I was right. A third cousin twice removed. Or something.

I was presented to my father covered in chicken feathers again. Tou-san was not impressed.

“You are to put all the chickens back. And you’re grounded.” He told me sternly and I grinned.

“Worth it.” I declared and Tou-san sighed and let me go to round up the chickens. It took me hours and got me even _more_ covered with feathers. Sasuke just sat there and laughed at me.

“Chi-chan, you have a chicken feather in your hair.” Itachi told me amused as he plucked it out at dinner.

“Another one? I thought I got them all.” Kaa-san sighed exasperated and I grinned.

“So what did you do today Chi-chan?” Itachi asked amused and Sasuke grinned.

“Chi-chan chased chickens around.” He reported and Itachi arched an eyebrow.

“Hey, Sasu-nii. I was much more awesome. I created a chicken stampede.” I declared.

“Yes, and you’ve been grounded for it.” Kaa-san told me sternly and I grinned shrugging.

“Worth it.”

Since summer came to an end, the leaves turned orange and began to fall. Falling leaves meant leaf piles and I intended to introduce the Uchiha kids to that particular wonder. For a price of course. I wasn’t _that_ nice. Also, I wanted money. And candy. Candy would do too.

“Line up everyone! One Ryo for one jump! Ten Ryo for twenty jumps! If you don’t have Ryo candy and favors are also accepted!” I cheered. I had created a very large pile of fallen leaves and was charging the Uchiha kids for a chance to play. “Or if you want an all-day pass it’s Twenty Ryo or candy! Line up! Line up!”

I was actually doing quite good. I had made about a hundred Ryo already as well as a sack of candy and this was just the afternoon of the first day. Autumn went on for _months_. I will be a rich, rich woman after this I tell you. Well, this little business venture wouldn’t last for months. Maybe a week or so until the kids figured out they could make leaf piles on their own for _free_ but until then, I was taking shameless advantage.

“Chiyomi!” It was Tou-san.

The Uchiha kids froze. Stared at the clan head. Then ran for it. One kid even dove into the pile of leaves. Points for innovation I guess?

“What are you doing?” He asked with a sigh and I pouted.

“I was running a legitimate business Tou-san. Now you’ve gone and scared them off.” I complained and Tou-san sighed looking at me.

“A legitimate business you say? And how much have you earned?”

“A hundred and… two ryo with limited edition Uchiha candy!” I proclaimed showing off my earnings. Tou-san seemed rather surprised. I grinned “One Ryo for one jump, ten ryo for twenty, full day pass for twenty ryo but I do take candy or favors. Wanna try Tou-san?”

“Come on, it’s dinner time.” Tou-san said deadpan and not dignifying that proposition with a response. I pouted.

At dinner I relayed my wondrous business plan to the family. Sasuke wanted in after he heard about my earnings. Itachi even showed interest. Tou-san promptly vetoed that idea.

“You three are banned from running businesses. Chiyomi especially.” He said sternly and I pouted.

“But Tou-san! It was a legitimate business.” I complained. It wasn’t. It was a scam. You’d think that ninjas would _appreciate_ my ingenuity.

“No.” Tou-san said although he looked very amused. It was the slight up-turned mouth and the glint in his eyes. Itachi chuckled.

“Good work Chi-chan. What are you going to spend your earnings on?” He asked and I grinned.

That’s a secret Ita-nii. You’ll know when you see it.” I declared and my parents actually looked slightly worried.

I spent my earnings to get a sling-shot and some sponges and paint. I covered the cut up the sponges, covered them in paint, and loaded up.

It was _glorious_. I spent the entire day sniping people and then running for it. It was great fun. Especially if they got _really_ mad. Like Yabao.

“CHIYOMI! GET BACK HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT!” Yabao screamed running after me. He was Uchiha police and looking very ridiculous at the current moment with a splatter of purple paint in the middle of his forehead. He also cursed like a sailor.

I lost him by hiding behind Granny Umi. Granny Umi ran the Dango shop in the Uchiha main strip. She even gave me a skewer of dango for free. Well, it was defective in that the little balls of mochi were all squished and it wasn’t grilled evenly but hey, free food. It didn’t look pretty enough to sell but it was still delicious.

I polished off the dango, thanked Granny Umi and then went for round two.

I eventually got caught though. Damned Enjio snuck up on me while I was aiming for that cranky old man that always swore like a sailor. I _think_ his name was Wataru but I could have been wrong.

“You’re grounded. Hand over the slingshot and ammunition.” Tou-san demanded when I was dumped into his office at the police station. I handed my weapons over but wasn’t too broken up about it. I had nailed a good fifteen people and splattered paint _everywhere_.

“Worth it.” I declared and Tou-san sighed.

“Clean it up Chiyomi.” He told me and I nodded. Good thing that I’d used water soluble paint now wasn’t it?

I apparently didn’t get it all because when Itachi got back from a mission three days later he just looked at me with an amused arched eyebrow.

 “Can I assume that the paint I’ve seen all around the compound is where your earnings went Chi-chan?” He asked and I grinned.

“Yup! I got grounded but so worth it! I got Tachiko-ba-san right in her hair!” I proclaimed. Tachiko-ba-san was a rather nasty gossip in the clan and no one liked her all that much because of her tendency to talk behind your back. She had let out a rather unholy shriek when I pegged her. It was wonderful.

“Chi-chan even got Tadao-itoko too! And he’s _Chuunin_.” Sasuke proclaimed with a grin. I had only gotten him because he had let me I was fairly sure. But I had to agree with Sasuke. It was an awesome moment.

“Well it looks like your aim is improving Chi-chan.” Itachi praised and I nodded. Hey, just because I goofed off most of the day didn’t mean that I didn’t train. I would have been skinned alive by everyone in my family if I neglected the ninja arts. I always made sure that Sasuke was better than me at taijutsu though. The kid needed all the praise he could get. He _worked_ for it too. Heaven knows he trained a hell of a lot more than I did. I was essentially an adult. I could deal with less praise and more instruction. Sasuke was a kid. He needed all the positive reinforcement that he could get. Especially if he was going to do something like become a ninja.

My life so far had been fun. Fun because I made _sure_ to have fun. It was peaceful even if I _did_ get grounded every other day. We trained, we laughed, and we trained some more with ambitions to become great ninja, worthy ninja. Ninja who would bring honor to the Uchiha name.

It was a good life.

Then Itachi came back from an escort mission with the Sharingan blazing in his eyes.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And here I thought that the previous chapter was long! Nearly thirty pages!

Chapter 3

**And it Begins**

“Sasuke. Chiyomi. Come.” Tou-san commanded all brisk and important sounding. I shot Sasuke a look and seeing that he had no clue what was going on either, we followed Tou-san.

“Anata. What’s the matter?” Kaa-san asked coming into the tea-room that Tou-san had gathered us all. Itachi was seated beside Tou-san a little stiffly. Very formal.

“I have some very good news.” Tou-san said almost to the point of boasting. He laid a hand on Itachi’s shoulder “Itachi has awakened the Sharingan on his latest mission.”

Sharingan. The Uchiha’s coveted eye-thingy. We didn’t know much about it. Just that it was desired and a mark of a ‘true’ Uchiha.

“That’s amazing Nii-san!” Sasuke said eyes wide.

“Congratulations Ita-nii!” I agreed with a smile. Itachi nodded at us. He was stiff.

“That’s wonderful news Itachi! And so young as well!” Kaa-san agreed “We should celebrate!”

“Thank you Kaa-sama.” Itachi said, ever the dutiful son. Tou-san nodded and we were pretty much considered dismissed although no one left. Tou-san sat there while Kaa-san asked Itachi what he wanted for dinner. Sasuke was demanding to see the Sharingan and to be honest, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about as well.

“Come on Nii-san! Pleeaasseeeee!” Sasuke said and I joined in too.

“Just for a bit Ita-nii? Pretty please?” We used the dual puppy-eye attack. Itachi looked at us and chuckled.

“Alright.” He agreed then looked to our parents “Kaa-sama. May we go outside?”

“Of course dears.” Kaa-san said beaming and Tou-san stood up as well.

“I shall introduce Itachi to basic sharingan training. Sasuke, Chiyomi. Come as well, this will benefit you when you awaken your own Sharingan.” Tou-san said proudly and we all trooped after him. Itachi however, was quieter than normal. He usually said _something_ at the very least. Not this silence-unless-absolutely-necessary thing he was doing. I kept my mouth shut because now wasn’t the place nor the time to ask about it.

We sat on the porch as Tou-san ran Itachi through his paces. Getting him used to the new sights that he was seeing with the Sharingan while providing a brief introduction to us.

What the Sharingan was. Super fight hack. How you got it. Intense trauma. How it was used. Cheating. So on and so forth.

I felt that it was a perfectly unused ninja technique. I mean sure, the see-into-the-future thing is pretty cool and the copying-jutsu thing is useful but you could see _chakra._ Which… was a big deal? Apparently?

We hadn’t really had a lesson on what the hell chakra actually was but from the way Tou-san described it, it was fairly impressive.

 Yet I still felt that the Sharingan was a wasted resource.

Enhanced vision, why the hell did every Uchiha insist on close-ranged combat? There were some supreme snipers-in-the-making here.

Hypnotism. Why weren’t more Uchiha down at T&I making all the lovely prisoners spill their guts?

Perfect recall. Why the hell wasn’t everyone in the Uchiha clan a genius? Sure, not all things could be learned from a book but really, quite a few things _could_.

Perhaps I was naïve to think this but I felt like that the sharingan was like a mine. A mine that was filled with streams of gold and diamonds and precious gems… only for it to be a coal mine and just a coal mine. Wasted. So much waste.

The sharingan eye itself though was like Lord Voldemort two point oh. The red was just creepy, especially when dusk fell I could swear that Itachi’s red eyes were glowing.

But since it’d gotten dark we trooped inside. That and Kaa-san had finished with dinner. Mainly dinner.

How Kaa-san whipped up a feast in four short hours I didn’t know but she did and it was wonderful. Itachi ate dinner and stayed until everyone dispersed like the good dutiful son that he was.

I found him that night staring up at the crescent moon. I’d only found him because I was sneaking downstairs to steal some eggs for my next prank. That was promptly put on hold when I spotted Itachi sitting on the porch staring at nothing.

“Ita-nii.” I say padding up and sitting beside him on the porch. Itachi looks over and gently fixes my bedhead.

“What are you doing up so late Chi-chan?” Itachi asked with a soft not quite there smile. I didn’t answer that one. Plus, he couldn’t talk.

“You’re really bothered Ita-nii.” I remark instead and I think I stuffed something up or used the wrong word because Itachi chuckles a little. Then his smile twists into something that’s almost sad.

“You were always very smart Chi-chan.” He said ruefully and… And I suddenly get the impression that he’s on to me. Not the whole ‘reincarnated into a cartoon’ thing, but the whole ‘smarter than an average four year old’ thing. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

I ignore the whole ‘potential not-really genius’ thing and focus on the bit where Itachi’s _sad_. And sad was probably an understatement.

“Why are you sorry? You don’t have to be happy all the time Ita-nii. You can be sad and angry too you know.” I pointed out and Itachi actually blinked at me.

Dear lord what were they _teaching_ this kid? Robot 101? Holy hell maybe Itachi wasn’t quiet by nature, maybe he was just socially inept because he hadn’t been taught proper social cues. I suddenly remembered that when Itachi was three he was probably toddling around doing genius stuff and _not_ playing like a normal child. Well damn. Add in Tou-san’s general overall social awkwardness and Itachi was pretty much doomed.

“Thank you Chi-chan.” Itachi said pulling me in for an awkward hug. Honestly, Uchiha. As much as I knew Itachi loved me, physical displays of affection were _not_ his strong suit. I crawled into his lap and gave him a _proper_ hug. “You were right. I am not happy Chi-chan. The Sharingan is a great advantage in battle, Tou-sama is right about that. But my teammate died on that mission. I feel that should be more important.”

Ah shit. That I hadn’t known about. People had _died_? Screw sad! This was way beyond just _sad_! And Itachi’s teammates too. They hadn’t been close, in fact, they’d never even visited but we were Uchiha. It’s practically the clan motto to ‘look after our own’ and ‘our own’ extended to teammates.

I understood the loss, I really did. Fleur had been a marine in a past life. Marines left no man behind, but not every man or woman _made_ it. Sometimes, not even the _bodies_ made it despite your best efforts.

There’s little you can do when you lose a fellow marine. There’s nothing to be done but attend the funeral and shed bitter tears. You looked after the family left behind as best you could but there was little else to be done.

The first time it happened had been the hardest for Fleur. The following times hadn’t made it any _easier_ but it didn’t have… it didn’t compare to the first brutal realization that you’d made it out but _they hadn’t_.

What else could you do but cry your eyes out and swear to do better?

I tucked my head under Itachi’s chin and hugged a little bit closer. I was literally in his lap at this point but Itachi needed all the comfort I could give right now.

“It’s okay to be sad Ita-nii. I think you lost a good friend on that mission. It’s okay to be sad.” I said softly and Itachi’s shoulders shook. Was he going to _cry_? I had _never_ , never seen my oldest brother cry. Still, crying was healthy for pent-up trauma “It’s okay to cry Ita-nii. Sasu-nii and I cry a lot too.”

 It wouldn’t compare and we both knew it but Itachi needed some excuse flimsy as it was. It was enough. Itachi’s breath hitched and he clung to me like I was a life-raft. He clung to me and he cried.

Itachi was silent when he cried. His shoulders shook and his breathing became slightly erratic but he was silent.

I said nothing too.

The next day only I knew about Itachi’s breakdown the night before. The next day Tou-san kept praising Itachi and Kaa-san joined in. The next day Sasuke vowed to awaken his own Sharingan just like his big brother and only I knew what it had cost Itachi. I kept it that way.

After Itachi awakened his Sharingan Tou-san decided that he would teach us about chakra. What it was, how it was used and the dos and don’ts. A little bit late in my books. But thanks to that, my world started making sense again.

That weird energy that I had been terrified of and still _to this day_ not able to ignore? That was chakra. Chaka turned out to be like jutsu fuel. You used it for _everything_. You used it to strengthen your muscles and speed up your body during Taijutsu. You used it to make the elements bend to your will in Ninjutsu. You used it to create intricate illusions in genjutsu. Literally everything.

So, jutsu fuel. Everyone had it, which explained why the weird feeling charka gave me never _went away_ , but it was finite. You had a pool and if you ran out you had to wait for a ‘recharge’. Tou-san was very adamant about that whole ‘recharge’ thing. Because if you didn’t wait and you used _all_ of it. You died. Chakra was the energy that kept your body alive. Use it all and your organs wouldn’t be able to find the energy to function and you would die. Cheery thought that.

In other news, my brain and inexplicable sixth sense were finally explained. That energy was charka and I could sense it. After being boiled alive in it. What the hell was it with this world and getting power-ups from trauma? That was _not_ how things worked damn it!

Well… okay, surviving trauma toughened you the hell up but it was _not_ the way to achieve mentally stable adults operating at full capacity. Also, not everyone came out the other side stronger. Some just… shrank to protect themselves.

This world was _messed up_. Seriously messed up.

But hey, charka.

To locate our chakra we were taught meditation and the leaf exercise. The point was to make a leaf stick to a point in your body with chakra. Usually it was the hand. I didn’t need the meditation. I could _feel_ the energy like a buzzing in the back of my mind. Like chatter in a crowded room. I’d gotten better at ignoring it over the years but I’d never been able to tune it out to nothing. It was sort of infuriating. Every time I thought I could put it out of my mind, something in the energy would _shift_ and I was back to square zero. I’d given up rather quickly and just dealt with the weirdly fluctuating sixth sense. At least now I knew what it _was_.

I hadn’t intended to figure it out before Sasuke. I really hadn’t, but it came so easily to me that it shocked even me because from the way Tou-san had been describing it, it shouldn’t _be_ that easy.

But it was. I’d basically skipped a step because I didn’t have to meditate to become aware of chakra. I was _constantly_ aware of it. Fiddling with something you were already aware of was a thousand times easier than fiddling with something you _weren’t_ aware of.

So _everyone_ was surprised when the leaf stuck to my palm. I hadn’t meant to get it to stick. I’d been waiting for Sasuke to do it before I showed any visible results but I’d been curious. Because… who wouldn’t be curious? I mean, mystical energy that was supposed to grant you superpowers?

So I’d done what any self-respecting human did in that situation and followed instructions.

Focus on the energy, sorry _chakra_ , find it, and then push it out of your body and into the leaf.

Simple. And rather idiot proof so I had to give props to Tou-san for that.

I tried it and the leaf stuck. That would’ve been fine since we were to put the leaf in the palm of our hand and then flip our hand over to test if it’d worked. It wasn’t that obvious if the leaf stuck for a split second before falling so I’d thought that I was safe.

Turns out, I was an idiot and I didn’t know the meaning of restraint because the leaf started _glowing_. I kid you not it glowed and it had color too so that made it _doubly_ obvious. Here I was hoping for some subtle test-run but no. The leaf just had to glow a damned _blue_.

I did the reasonable thing and shrieked. Then I flailed trying to get the leaf off my hand but _no_ it was well and truly stuck.

Sasuke jumped startled and then proceeded to start laughing at me as I tried to shake the stubborn leaf off.

“Not funny!” I huffed when the leaf finally detached from my hand and fluttered to the ground. I glowered at it.

“Uh… well done Chiyomi.” Tou-san said and I peered at him. Ohhhhh yeah this guy was laughing alright. His mouth was twitching.

“Really funny.” Sasuke said and stuck his tongue out at me. I think I might have been a bad influence on the kid. Ah well.

My achievement at getting the chakra exercise down on the first go was diminished by my ungraceful flailing.

So… not all bad. Tou-san even told Kaa-san all about it during dinner with Sasuke attempting a reenactment of the event.

I threw a piece of broccoli at him because that was _not_ how it went down.

I then promptly got grounded for throwing food. Itachi was having the time of his life laughing at us.

Turns out, it wasn’t that big of a disaster that I’d shown better chakra control than Sasuke. Apparently girls were just plain better at it than guys by virtue of possessing that second X chromosome. So no dramas with Sasuke’s self-worth issues there.

It also helped that I’d figured out Tou-san’s system ages ago. Praise one kid to push the other. You do good and come in first, you get a carrot in form of praise. You _don’t_ come in first and you don’t get the carrot. The stick was more training which wasn’t much of a stick since Tou-san _was_ a good father and very much aware of where training ended and where ‘child abuse’ began. He never even _toed_ that particular line for which I was thankful. I wouldn’t have been able to get away with _half_ of the crap I’d pulled otherwise.

Once you knew Tou-san’s rather simple system, it was easy to game it. Which I did. Shamelessly. It wasn’t like I couldn’t deal with lack of praise. I wasn’t _actually_ a child and I didn’t have Sasuke’s personality. So I was quite happy with the thing Tou-san and I had going. It was some sort of unspoken agreement that he wouldn’t chew me out _too much_ for not doing my best in order for Sasuke to take the spotlight, and in exchange, I could wreck havoc on the Uchiha clan in my down time with minimal consequences.

It worked very well as a system. Like the agreement I had with Kaa-san about acting like a proper Uchiha ought to outside clan walls in exchange for running around like a lunatic and causing all sorts of strife _inside_ clan walls.

We never expressly _discussed_ it but it was there.

I had the mind of an adult and I could do better at abstract thought construction than Sasuke. Sasuke wasn’t stupid, he was just four. He couldn’t exactly read between the lines and so needed vocal affirmation of good and bad.

With the system that I’d  developed, on pure accident mind you, Sasuke was getting all the praise he needed without any kid being left out in the cold and potentially developing massive mental issues down the line.

In fact, I’d say that Sasuke was going to shape up to be quite the mentally well-balanced adult at this rate. Sure, there’s always going to be comparison with Itachi, but since I’m very much the black sheep of the _entire clan_ I’d say that Sasuke would be good. Because you know, no one wanted _two_ of me so they’re grateful that Sasuke turned out happy and cheery instead of, well, _me_.

I knew very well that if I could put in the effort, I actually had a pretty good chance of at least matching Shisui in the whole ‘genius’ department but… no. Just… no.

Look at Itachi. They heaped way too many expectations on that kid’s shoulders.

Sasuke thankfully, was a bright kid.  Cleaver and smart but not prodigy-smart. I swear I don’t know where all the brains was coming from in this family. Sure Kaa-san had been a jounin but surely that wasn’t genetic? I mean, Itachi had _her_ outstripped in terms of childhood achievements. Maybe we just got lucky.

Or maybe because our parents were crazy.

I hopped on _that_ train of thought with great eagerness when Tou-san told us that the chakra control exercise with a leaf would lead to jutsu.

Which I was fine with, because hey, cool ninja superpowers. I _thought_ that we were going to do something easy. Like that quick-movement disappearing act that I’d seen a few Uchiha pull before. I was eager to learn _that_. Not a clue what it was called but it was the most ninja-like thing I’d seen so far.

My hopes were soundly dashed and I was forced to accept the fact that my parents were insane because the jutsu that we were to learn?

The Uchiha right of passage and signature technique. The Gokyaku. Which I didn’t know meant _Grand Fire Ball_ until Tou-san demonstrated it over a small lake.

Sasuke stared in eager fascination.

I stared in slight horror and shock.

They were going to teach _four year olds_ how to shoot _fire_ from their _mouths_. Fire. Real-life fire.

We hadn’t even been allowed to touch the damned _stove_ at home.

Come to think of it, Kaa-san hadn’t allowed us to touch the cooking knives at home either and we were literally throwing deadly weaponry at targets with pretty decent accuracy at this point.

The cool factor of being able to spit out fireballs like a _dragon_ was thoroughly mitigated by the fact that Tou-san wanted _four year olds to learn this_.

I stared at Tou-san and wondered if he realized how _lucky_ he was that he’d wound up with one genius kid, one reincarnated adult and one borderline-genius kid. If he’d gotten three _normal_ kids, they probably wouldn’t have survived past this exact moment.

Sasuke of course was all gun-ho about trying it. I wanted to throttle Tou-san because this was _not_ something you taught toddlers.

Well Tou-san obviously thought differently because then after another showing of the hand seals, it was _our turn_.

God damn it we only learned all twelve seals two days ago!

Sasuke of course tried it. I got ready to push him into the lake in case he set his _face_ on fire.

I turned out to be right.

“Gokyaku no-ack!” Yup. Sasuke had choked. On _fire_. I shoved him into the water and he went in with a splash. He bobbed back up spluttering. “Chi-chan!”

“You were choking on _fire!_ ” I shot back not at all repentant and Tou-san seemed slightly sheepish.

“Maybe it’s a bit too early-“ Tou-san suggested but Sasuke was _invested_ now and I could see it.

“No! I can do this!” Sasuke says clambering onto the bank and nearly throwing himself back onto the jetty. I looked at Tou-san.

“You get to tell Kaa-san tonight.” I informed him promptly and then went back to making sure Sasuke didn’t manage to set himself on fire again. When I looked back, Tou-san seemed to be re-writing his will in his head. Served him right. Teaching _four year olds_ how to spew fire.

But since Sasuke _was_ trying, I felt the need to try too because… fire. Big bright ball of fire. It was cool. Not ninja like in the _least_ because you shoot that off and you can wave all form of stealth goodbye but it was _cool_.

I swallowed and planted my feet taking a breath. Slowly I formed the seals careful not to get them wrong and then breathed out pushing chakra into my mouth as instructed.

A whisp of smoke came out. A whisp. And I was all braced and ready for a fully formed ball and everything. Damn it.

“Put more conviction into it Chiyomi.” Tou-san says but it’s a little dazed. I think he’s still contemplating his death by Kaa-san.

“Gokyaku no jutsu!” Sasuke screamed and honestly was that _necessary_? But this time he was successful and the fire shot from his mouth and actually formed into a sort-of ball before vanishing.

I clapped.

“Good job Sasuke.” Tou-san said in approval and Sasuke beamed.

I tried again. And this time I poured as much chakra as I could into my mouth.

It blew up in my face and Sasuke shoved _me_ into the lake.

I surfaced spluttering and Sasuke was grinning.

“You were on _fire_.” He says mimicking me with frightening accuracy. I still stuck my tongue out at him.

“I don’t sound like that!”

“Do too!”

“Do not!”

“Focus.” Tou-san said and I sloshed to shore.

‘Do too’ Sasuke mouthed at me and I elbowed him in the ribs. Tou-san sighed.

“Maybe that’s enough for the day. Let’s go home, otherwise your Kaa-san won’t be happy and you’ll miss dinner.” Tou-san said and hustled us along.

“Awww I wanted to train some more.” Sasuke lamented and I nodded too.

“You can do that tomorrow.” Tou-san promised us and Sasuke glanced over.

“Can you train us again tomorrow Tou-san?” he asks eagerly.

“I’m busy tomorrow but we’ll see.” He said and Sasuke nods eager. Optimist. I’d taken that as a no.

Tou-san wasn’t able to make it the next day. Sasuke shuffled off sulking.

Through sheer luck, we ran into Shisui on our way out.

“Off to train?” He asked us all smiles and enthusiasm. Sasuke squinted at him.

“Shisui-san. Hi.” I say waving saving Sasuke who nodded like he’d known the guy’s name all along.

“Yeah! We’re gonna be great ninja just like Nii-san one day!”

“Oh? Then you’d better train hard then.” Shisui said very much amused “Do you want me to help? I’ll have you know, I’m about the same strength as your brother.”

“Really?!” Sasuke asks immediately wide-eyed “Really, really?”

“Of course!” Shisui says laughing and it’s bright.

“We’re working on the Gohyaku. Can you help?” I ask and going by the way Shisui’s suddenly snickering, I’d mispronounced something. Again.

“Go _kya_ ku Chi-chan.” Sasuke whispers in my ear and I cough. I knew that.

“Sure, I can help you on your _Gohyaku_.” Shisui teased and I huff at him.

“Ita-nii’s nicer.” I declare and Shisui gives me hurt wide eyes.

“Is that how you treat someone who’s graciously offering to teach you?” He asks in mock hurt and Sasuke and I exchange a look. We grin and it’s one of those moments where we’re on the exact same train of thought and we both know it.

“You know, I bet nii-san can kick his ass.” Sasuke states and I nod.

“With an arm tied behind his back.” I agree.

“Hey!” Shisui says and we squeak when he suddenly picks us up around our middles “Alright brats, I’m going to prove how much better than Itachi I am! Be prepared!”

Then we suddenly felt like we were free-falling and I shriek with Sasuke. But as soon as the sensation started, it’d ended and we’re suddenly in another place _entirely_. We’re at the jetty. Which was a good ten minute walk away from where we’d started. What.

We’d… we’d just done that ninja teleporting thing. Holy crap. I _so_ had to learn that.

“SO COOL!” Sasuke said and had to be put down on the jetty because he was wriggling so much. He was immediately latching onto Shisui. “Can you teach us that? Can you? Can you?”

“Teach us cool jutsu? Pretty please?” I ask and we shamelessly gang up on Shisui.

Sadly, since Shisui wasn’t _that_ close with the rest of our family, he wasn’t at all swayed by the puppy eyes. Damn. Instead of fireballs I wanted to learn teleportation damn it. It was the _one_ ninja technique I wanted to learn but _no_. We had to learn _fire balls_. Why?

I was sulking. You’re never too old to sulk.

“You’re supposed to be working on your Gokyaku.” Shisui says sternly “Don’t get distracted or else I won’t shunshin you back.”

What the hell was a… shun… damn it. Now I _had_ to ask. I tug Shisui’s sleeve.

“What’s shun… _that_.” I say and give up on the word half way through with a wince. Shisui snickers at me.

“Shun shin” He say slowly breaking it down for me “Shun means very fast. Shin is the body.”

Fast body. Who the hell named these things? My dissatisfaction must have shown on my face because Shisui laughed again and put me down onto the jetty.

“It doesn’t literally mean ‘fast body’ don’t worry, you just haven’t learned all the hard words yet.” He assures and I stick my tongue out at him. I was doing _fine_ in my reading and writing lessons. And this place had _three_ separate writing systems that were used _at the same time_. In _one sentence_. It sucked and since I was technically doing this as a second language, I’d say that I was going _great_. I’d barely gotten my hiragana and katakana memorized and now it was damned _kanji_. Ugh.

“Can we _please_ start training now?” Sasuke complained now that the excitement of the shiny new jutsu had worn off. I eyed Shisui. I’m coming for you teleporter. I’m going to learn that jutsu and _abuse_ it.

Shisui winks at me and then hustles us to the jetty’s edge.

“Alright. Why don’t you show me what you’ve got?” He asked and Sasuke all bright and eager went first.

His hands made the seals slowly and carefully and he took a deep breath.

“Gokyaku no jutsu!” He yelled probably as loud as he can and then blew outwards.

It was actually impressive how quickly he improved. This was the… what, fifth time he’d tried it? And it was already forming a very decently sized fireball. Shisui nodded.

“Good, good. But you’re wasting too much chakra. Put the chakra into your breath after you’ve created the flame. It works better that way.” Shisui told Sasuke who nodded. “Go practice that for a bit, it might take a few tries to nail down. Remember, chakra in the breath.”

“I’ll get it!” Sasuke says all determined and shuffles to the side to practice blowing out. I took note too and it made sense. Why waste chakra by shoving it all in your mouth when you could blow it out into air? Fire needed oxygen to survive so if you blew out oxygen and not pure fire, it’d be more effective, and save you chakra probably.

“Alright Chiyomi. Your turn.” Shisui said and I stepped forwards.

I weaved the seals and blew out as instructed. I was _not_ screaming the name like some maniac. Just, no. I had to draw the line _somewhere_. Also, I was going to bet you that they didn’t shout the name of their attack in battle. Talk about wasting precious seconds. Why would I want to give the other guy a heads up as to what the hell was coming?

I made a fireball but… it was pathetically small. Tennis ball sized small. I glowered at it.

“You need to put more conviction into it Chiyomi.” Shisui says arching an eyebrow. I huffed.

“I _am_.” I complain because I’d done the exact same thing that Sasuke had done and _he_ didn’t have this problem.

“You are most definitely _not_.” Shisui tells me and I stare at him.

“Am too.” I complain and point to Sasuke “I’m doing the same thing.”

“You’re not.” Shisui informs me promptly “There’s just _one_ thing different that Sasuke’s doing that you’re not.”

I stare.

No. Oh hell _no_. Why. Just WHY?!

“I’m not shouting the name.” I say stubbornly because it was impractical and all around _ridiculous_.

“Why not?”

“It’s _embarrassing!”_ I wail because it was. I was not going around like some idiot yelling the names of my attack _before_ I unleash them. Just no. Absolutely not.

Shisui laughs at me.

“You run around covered in paint on a good day and you call this _embarrassing_?” He says through his laughter and I pout.

“Yes. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid! It’s cool.” Sasuke informs me taking a break from his breathing and I stick my tongue out at him.

“It’s not cool.” I mumble and glower at the pond. Not doing it. So. Not. Doing. It.

“And I think I’ve found your problem.” Shisui says very much amused and I stare up at him mutinously. No way in all of flaming hell. “How about I tell you a story hm?”

He sits down on the jetty legs swinging _just_ a hair’s breadth from the water. Sasuke sat down eagerly. I grudgingly sat down too. This was going to be one of those fable stories wasn’t it? Those things you told kids to teach them stuff like the tortoise and the hare.

Well no fable was going to get _me_ to start screaming the name of my attacks like some idiot, I don’t care who _else_ was doing it.

“This is the story of how this world came to be, and how us humans came to be.” Shisui started and I choked. _Creation myth_?! This whole yelling thing was harking back to _creation myth_?! “After the gods Izanami and Izanagi had created the seas and all the lands, they wanted to get married. They went around the tori gates three times and Izanami spoke her wedding vows first, but it should have been Izanagi that spoke first and so the children born from that union were deformed and cast away. After seeking advice from the other gods, they tried once again. This time Izanagi spoke the vows first and this time, their union was a successful one.”

I was utterly unconvinced. Shisui smiled.

“Later, Izanami died and driven by grief, Izanagi went to the underworld to retrieve her. However, he was unsuccessful and escaped from the land of the dead terrified of the horrors that he had seen there. To prevent those horrors from ever reaching the land of the living, he sealed the passageway for all time with sacred words.”

Cue pointed look here. I crossed my arms. Nope. Just, nope. Not buying it.

“When Izanagi was cleansing himself from the taint of the underworld, he created three gods. Amaterasu when he cleansed his right eye, Tsukiyomi when he cleansed his left, and Susanoo when he cleansed his nose. Now, Amaterasu and Susanoo often fought. The worst was when they had a competition. They competed on who could create the most humans and swore to distribute them throughout the lands.”

So… humanity existed because of a _bet_? Wow. Shisui wasn’t done though.

“However, when the competition ended, both gods proclaimed themselves the victor. Eventually, Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, was so enraged that she left the heavens and hid in a cave. Without the sun, the world began to die and so all the gods got together to coax her out. It was eventually Uzume the goddess of mirth and dawn that drew Amaterasu from the cave. To prevent anything like that happening ever again, the cave was sealed, once again, by _sacred words_.”

Fine, words were important in the mythology and religion of this world. I got _that_.

“Eventually humans were given the rule of the world by the gods, cemented by their vow. So ever since then, our words and our promises have power. _We_ have the power to speak things into being. In fact, as legend goes, the Sage of Six Paths, the creator of ninjutsu, spoke the first jutsu into being and brought peace to all the land.”

Was he serious? Apparently, yes. Damn it!

“Do I _have_ to yell it?” I whine and Shisui laughs. I pout. For heaven’s sake why oh _why_ did it have to be this _one thing_ that was absolutely necessary? Why?

“Well, maybe you don’t have to scream it like Sasuke.” Shisui says and well, at least there’s that?

“The world is unfair.” I complain and Shisui laughs at me.

“Why don’t you try again? And this time, _name_ your jutsu hm?”

“I don’t wanna.” I complain but still clamber to my feet. I set my feet, go through the seals and grudgingly say the name. “Gokyaku no jutsu.”

It’s grumbled and grudging and then I blow outwards not expecting any change.

The ensuing fireball startles even _Shisui_ because it’s five times the size of Sasuke’s. I yelp and break the seal my fingers are in and stop the chakra because _too much fire!_

Sasuke pushes me into the lake with all the ruckus that I was making.

I emerge to a laughing Shisui and a giggling Sasuke.

“I wasn’t even on fire!” I complain and Sasuke gives me an innocent look and shrugs.

“I thought you were.” He says innocent as can be and I frown. Sasuke grins.

Oh, this kid.

I bring my arm back and sweep it through the water causing a wave that sprinkles Sasuke and Shisui with water. Sasuke shrieks and holds his arms up. Shisui’s not bothered by the specks of water that manages to reach him and just laughs.

“I’m going to dunk you!” I threaten pulling myself out of the water and Sasuke sticks his tongue out at me.

“Can’t!” He taunts and runs behind Shisui’s legs.

I clamber onto the jetty and dive at him sloping wet.

“I so can!” I yell and we basically run around Shisui’s legs shrieking.

He then proceeds to chuck us _both_ into the lake.

We surface spluttering and Shisui’s standing there on the jetty laughing and that just won’t do. I look at Sasuke who nods at me and we zero in on Shisui.

Sensing danger, Shisui stops laughing and smiles at us.

“So, Sasuke, do you want to try the fire ball again?” He asks innocently and we clamber up onto the jetty trying to be innocent.

“Sure.” Sasuke says and then dives at Shisui’s legs. He’s promptly side stepped and Sasuke misses by a mile. I try to trip him but Shisui jumps over _that_ and we’re left sprawled like idiots on the jetty. I look to Sasuke as we pick ourselves up. Then we look to Shisui.

“Get him!” I shout and we’re off running down the jetty after him. Shisui’s laughing and he’s playing along because he doesn’t just vanish on us. He stays tauntingly _just_ out of reach and training has officially degenerated into a mindless game of tag.

At some point, all thoughts of revenge were lost and we just roll around on the grass shrieking with laughter. Even Shisui’s rather grass-stained at this point and that was how Itachi found us.

“Nii-san!” Sasuke says because he notices Itachi first and honestly I swear that kid had an Itachi-radar or something. “You’re back from your mission!”

“I am.” Itachi says smiling as Sasuke abandons Shisui and runs up to him “Kaa-san is calling us for dinner. And why are you soaked?”

“Shisui-san threw us into the lake.” I say unrepentantly throwing Shisui under the bus and Shisui splutters a little. Itachi immediately has eyes on Shisui.

“It was for training!” Shisui says quickly.

“No it wasn’t.” Sasuke and I inform Itachi and Shisui huffs at us.

“Okay you little traitors, I see how it is. See if I teach you anything ever again.” He threatens but there’s no heat to it so I stick my tongue out at him.

“Alright, let’s get back.” Itachi says smiling and we’re all hustled back to the compound at a walk. I still hadn’t forgotten that teleporting trick though. Just you wait Shisui, just you wait.

We faced the wrath of Kaa-san ten minutes later and Shisui teleported to escape. I glowered at the space he used to occupy.

After a nice hot bath, we were all seated for dinner and we went through the usual ‘how was your day’ conversation.

I threw Shisui under the bus again. Revenge. No one out-pranked _me_.

“Shisui-san helped train us today. Until he threw us into the lake.” I reported. Then Sasuke the little brat threw me under a _freight train_.  

“Chi-chan _likes_ Shisui.” Sasuke says grinning and I choke on my rice. Itachi’s chopsticks suddenly snap. Kaa-san’s wide-eyed and the piece of fish that almost made it to Tou-san’s mouth falls to the table.

“Shisui eh? Yuusaki’s boy?” Tou-san says rather ominously and Kaa-san is giggling. Itachi’s probably plotting murder underneath his breath.

“I do _not_.” I huff a little grossed out because damn it Shisui was barely a teenager. Ewww. I’m over thirty! All dating prospects _must_ be adults. Which means I won’t be dating _anyone_ until I hit at _least_ twenty five because otherwise that’s just creepy. Actually, at twenty five in _this_ life I’d be what, over fifty? Damn it. Screw it I’m dying alone.

And now that just sounded sad. Fleur had Mike and there had been a wedding planned before the cancer kicked in. I kind of wanted that again. Not Mike, because I wasn’t _really_ Fleur anymore but I wanted a love like that.

But I was either going to be a cougar or a cradle robber.

God damn it.

“You were _staring_.” Sasuke informs me and apparently in his mind, staring equated a crush.

“Yeah because he does that _thing_.” I say waving my hands “The… the smoky leafy disappearing thing! _I_ want to do that. The shun-thingy”

Kaa-san is the only one that looks disappointed. Tou-san visibly sighs in relief. Itachi seems to be revising his murder plans.

“Oh it’s just the shunshin.” Tou-san mutters under his breath “Well, I can teach you two, but only after you’ve mastered the Gokyaku.”

“Tou-san knows it?” I blurt out and going by the slightly affronted glower I get, he does know it.

“So what about you Itachi? Did your mission go well?” Kaa-san asks diverting our attention and I was so dunking Sasuke into the lake the next time we went. Honestly.

Itachi latched onto the new topic with gusto and the conversation moved into safer waters after that.

Three weeks later we showed off the fruits of the effort to Tou-san.

A fire ball big enough to engulf a full grown man that made the lake _steam_.

I’d also admitted defeat and dealt with calling out the name of the jutsu before firing it.

Didn’t mean I screamed it like Sasuke though. I said it. Just shy of a mumble but I said it. Turns out, volume had no impact on the strength of the jutsu. Thank _god_.

“That is good work, Sasuke, Chiyomi.” Tou-san said after the fire had died down. He laid a hand on each of our shoulders and we stood a little straighter. There was suddenly a feeling of _ceremony_ to the whole thing. “The Gokyaku is a right of passage into the Uchiha clan. Mastery of this jutsu means that you will now be recognized as full fledged members of the clan. You have deemed yourselves worthy of wearing our proud crest upon your backs. Congratulations.”

He said it and then he smiled.

“I’m proud of you both.”

Sasuke lit up brighter than the sun and I grinned too because Tou-san had _never_ said he was proud of us before. He’d never said he _wasn’t_ proud to be sure but Tou-san wasn’t very free with his praise and this was a big deal.

Sasuke was over the moon.

“Thank you Tou-san!” He says nearly vibrating with joy and Tou-san nods and coughs his ears going a bright red again.

“You’re the best Tou-san!” I say partially because it was _true_ and partially because I wanted to see those ears get _fire engine_ red. I’m very successful and Tou-san does his awkward throat-clear and feet shuffle.

“Hem. Right, well we best be getting back. I promised your Kaa-san that I’d pick up some groceries on the way home.” Tou-san says and quickly hustles us off. I snicker and Sasuke skips off.

Mastering the Grand Fire Ball didn’t just grant us a ceremonial affirmation from Tou-san, it was a full-blown celebration. Apparently Itachi had been through the same thing and as per clan tradition, he hadn’t _told us_.

Kaa-san made a _feast_. Apparently learning how to spew out fire from your mouth was a milestone in this clan.

We even got presents in the form of new clothes. Another tradition. In fact, we got a whole new _wardrobe_. Of shirts anyway.

Each one had the Uchiha fan emblazoned on the back.

Our mastery of the Gokyaku had also cemented our future professions. We would be ninjas.

Absolutely no one was shocked.

We turned five not long after that and our preparation for the ninja academy began in earnest.

Apparently, Sasuke and I had missed the cut off for the year by two months. Those who had turned five _before_ April, were allowed to enter this year, but for Sasuke and I, we had to wait until next year. Since our birthday was in July smack bang in the middle of the year, our formal ninja education would begin next year in April. April was the start of a school year here so I supposed that it made sense.

That left us with one year to polish up what we didn’t already know. Tou-san was rather hell-bent on getting us to the top of the class since there would be no other Uchiha kids in our year. There were a couple scattered in the older years but the class three years after my future one would be _full_ of Uchiha kids.

Some sort of baby boom.

Our training schedule doubled and I mourned my loss of free time. The Uchiha compound was actually _peaceful_ more often than not and that was just unacceptable.

I would be entering the academy in a year. In a year I’d take the first steps towards my ninja career. The ninja academy wasn’t advertised as such but it _was_ a place where soldiers were trained. Trained carefully no doubt but still trained to kill. That was the truth of this world and no amount of ridiculous jutsu requirements was going to get around _that_. It was a place that created _soldiers_. Not superheroes.

In a year I would be an academy student. A _cadet_. That meant a lot to me. It meant a lot because of Fleur and the life that she had lived. I walk into that academy and I will be a soldier in training. I walk in there and I would dedicate myself to the life of a ninja. It wasn’t something that I was willing to half-ass. That would get me killed.

This world was more sophisticated about combat than I’d originally imagined. I’d been biased, I’d realized that I was in a cartoon and so had expected cartoonish training methods. Ridiculous things that you saw in movies that never worked out well in real life.

But I’d been mostly wrong. Some bits were still rather ridiculous, but most of it wasn’t. It wasn’t because these were real _people_ and real people figured out what wasn’t working pretty damned quickly. A ninja child was a very big investment. Time, energy, money. You didn’t want to go too hard too fast or else you could wave that investment goodbye.

So whatever they taught at the academy would be _important_. It was things that I had to _learn_. Vital little tidbits that you didn’t know you needed until you got screwed out in the field. Drops of information that steadied your shaking hands when everything blew up in your face. Important things.

Things that if I half-assed might get me _killed_ because this was _not_ a world like Fleur’s.

Children being sent out to battle was the norm here. Hell, it was a mark of _pride_ to see battle when you were young. That was how this world worked and one girl raving about how it was _wrong_ wasn’t going to change it.

So I was never going to half-ass the academy. That meant I had one last year of _fun_. One last year of freedom to do all the _kid_ things before I’d have to buckle down and save my own ass. One last year of being a child in every sense of the word.

It was kind of sad thinking about it and I hoped that the academy would at least be child-friendly. Maybe they’d do games. I hoped so. Sasuke deserved a childhood that was longer than a measly five years.

On another note, turning five led to another Shichi-go-san celebration. We weren’t in the youngest group anymore. In fact, the youngest group had a good _ten_ people. The Uchiha clan was growing, quite rapidly at that.

Tou-san gave another speech and handed out fans to the new kiddies.

We were the only five year olds there that were allowed to wear the clan symbols stitched onto the back of our formal kimono. Even a few seven year olds were staring at us in envy.

Guess Tou-san was the only father crazy enough to teach his _four year olds_ to shoot fire.

For that insanity, he got quite the praise. Sasuke was beaming at all the attention he was getting.

Since it was my last year of freedom, I did my best to cause havoc where I could. Seemingly in retaliation, my parents banded together to keep be as busy with _training_ as they could.

Kaa-san loaded me up on taijutsu, proper etiquette and an intensive all-you-need-to-know course in poisons. Tou-san decided that since we could breathe fire, we should learn the three most basic jutsu.

The clone, the transformation and the replacement jutsus. We did the clone one first because it was the _easiest_ and the first jutsu that the students learned. But Tou-san just had to be _insane_ and teach us to spew fire first. Talk about getting it backwards.

In retaliation to the training hell they were trying to put me through, I kicked up as much fuss in the Uchiha compound as possible. I even went as far as to paint all the trees a bright flamingo _pink_.

Sasuke had found it hilarious and even Itachi had picked up on the tug-of-war that was going on.

I had to admit, I’d had a blast.

In spring I collected flower petals and made a path throughout the compound. In summer I got hold of water balloons and pelted people from the rooves. In autumn I made piles of leaves and used them as a trampoline. In winter I instigated snowball fights with just about everyone. It got better when I started mixing paint with the snow.

I was grounded pretty much every day, double grounded at least once a week and the police station had become a new playground just because of how often I had been dragged there. I even had a designated chair in a paint-stained corner now. I was proud of that chair.

Sasuke had told me once that he thought I was at _least_ half-insane. I’d offered him a balloon filled with paint. Not a _rubber_ one because apparently balloons here were different from the balloons back in Fleur’s world. Here, they were made of thick rubber and played with like a ball or yo-yo. They wouldn’t burst on impact so I’d resorted to those origami blow-up paper balloons. I’d fold it shiny-side in and it would temporarily protect the actual paper from the liquid inside. They had to be used fast though so when Sasuke hadn’t taken it, I’d ditched it at Bantu. Bantu was a rather grumpy old man, and very agile for his age because he chased me for five streets before giving up.

While Itachi never joined in, he got this look in his eyes when it was just us around. It was… he looked at me differently when it was just _us_. He was careful when there were other people around and it had taken me a while to figure out why. It’d taken Shisui showing up one day out of the blue.

“Hey kid.” He said just randomly appearing on the branch beside me and I jumped and then nearly fell out of the tree. He saved me though, barely.

“Shisui-san.” I greeted when I was plopped back securely onto the branch.

“Setting up your next big prank?” Shisui asked amused and I nodded.

“I’m getting all the cats stuck in trees.” I informed him with a grin and Shisui stares at me, stares at the gathering cats on the ground and then snorts.

“You’re an evil little one aren’t you?” he asks amused “You realize your cousins will _hate_ you for this? They’re the ones that’ll have to get the cats down.”

“Kinda the point.”

Shisui laughs.

“Well, how about you put that diabolical plan on hold hm? Itachi tells me you mastered the Grand Fire Ball? Still want to learn the shunshin?” he offers and I perk up.

“Yes!” I say nearly tackling him and he laughs.

“Alright, let’s go.” He says and hoists me up onto his back and I peek over his shoulder.

“No Sasu-nii?” I ask slightly confused because training was _always_ Sasuke and me together.

“Our little secret.” Shisui says with a wink and I don’t get it. Then with a flicker of chakra, we’re freefalling. I don’t yelp in surprise this time. I shriek and laugh at the sensation. Teleporting was _fun_.

We end up in the forests at the back of the Uchiha clan lands.

Usually, for a kid to be taken into a forest by a distant relation, this would have set off all _sorts_ of alarm bells. But we were Uchiha. Uchiha practically raised their kids communally. Everyone made an effort to know everyone. We looked after our own. Sure we had the ‘bad news’ bad apples in our clan but they were _known_ and everyone steered clear. It was the Uchiha way of saying ‘we don’t approve, stop this immediately’ without saying it outright.

So Shisui taking me randomly into a forest wasn’t that big of a deal.

“Itachi tells me that you’ve got good chakra control. That’s where we’ll start. The Gokyaku is good for beginners because you don’t need much control to make it work, the shunshin is different. So, we’re going to climb some trees.” Shisui declares and pats a tree.

“I don’t get it.” I inform him and Shisui laughs.

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain.” He assures and picks up a leaf off the ground and makes it stick to his palm. “Remember the leaf exercise?”

I nod.

“It’s the same thing, but instead of sticking a leaf to your hand, you stick _yourself_ to the tree.” Shisui says and demonstrates. He crawls _up_ the smooth trunk of the tree on all fours like spider-man and I’m gaping. How the… what…

He summersaults off the tree and laughs at my impression of a guppy.

“Now you try. Remember, it’s the same as the leaf exercise, just with a little more chakra. Also remember to use your knees too.” Shisui instructs and I approach the tree carefully.

The trunk of the tree wasn’t smooth like paper but it didn’t have any decent handholds either. Certainly no branches until a good fifteen feet up. Yeah, this place had some big ass trees.

I cautiously put my hand to the tree and push out my chakra. I can feel it _soaking_ into the tree and that _can’t_ be right. So I pull back a little and stop pushing chakra so hard.

Shisui makes no comment as I stand there putting my palm onto the tree and then taking it off.

It takes me a good five minutes to realize that I’m using too much chakra and that a thin film of it between the skin of my hand and the tree was enough. The chakra just needed to stick to the _bark_ of the tree not the entire tree itself.

From there, I discovered that it was relatively easy to stick to the tree and not budge even when I pulled backwards. The chakra acted like some sort of glue between my hand and the tree. If I made the chakra… _softer_ I could slide my hand around on the bark but not pull away. If I made it harder, firmer, then my hand would be rooted into the place I stuck it to.

It was kind of fascinating and I hadn’t even _known_ that this could happen. I didn’t even know you could make chakra _softer_. Well, that was how I saw it. I think I just used slightly less and spread it thinner but it _felt_ softer to me. Whatever worked I guess.

Throughout my experimentation, Shisui said nothing.

I tried both hands just to make sure that I had those down before I tried the knees.

The knees were remarkably harder than the hands because… who the hell could imagine energy shooting out from their _knees_. The mouth and hands? Easy. Knees? Not so much.

But since I’d gotten the hand thing down, it was just a matter of applying that to another part of the body. Which sort of led to question what part of the body it _couldn’t_ be applied to. Probably none. Chakra seemed to flow from within the body and out the skin. Since I was _covered_ in skin and chakra was literally another form of energy, there logically shouldn’t be any limit as to where you could emit chakra from.

My first attempt at crawling up the tree had a knee slipping but since I’d managed three other points of contact, I don’t face-plant nor do I slide down the tree.

The first few feet are a slow careful crawl but as I gain confidence and learn to _trust_ the chakra holding me up, I get faster as I get higher.

At some point Shisui’s suddenly _there_ and I almost lose concentration and fall _off_ the tree because he’s standing on the trunk.

Honest to god standing there, defying gravity. He’s parallel to the ground and laughing at my gaping face.

It takes me a while to process and then I squint at his feet.

“Chakra?” I ask and Shisui nods smirking but I’m still frowning. He’s jutting straight out. That’s _got_ to be killing his core muscles. I slowly try and sit up and nope, gravity still works. I almost fall backwards but get a hand on the trunk just in time. I hang there leaning backwards and staring up at Shisui wondering how the hell he’s doing it. I reach forwards to poke his middle.

“Hey.” Shisui says very much amused and steps out of the way like we were on flat ground. I huff.

“How’s your stomach not dying?” I demand and Shisui blinks and laughs at me. I stick my tongue out at him. It wasn’t _my_ fault that I didn’t know the words for ‘core muscles’ here. Anatomical terms hadn’t been really high on Kaa-san’s reading and writing lessons. Sure I knew all the body parts but… abs? Nope.

“Now that’s lesson number two.” Shisui says grinning and I frown. Huh? “Come on.”

He leads the way up the tree and I debate trying to copy him and walk but then dismiss it. It was slightly undignified but I’d talk crawling over a fifteen feet plummet to the ground. We reach the lowest branch. A large thick thing that Sasuke and I could probably picnic on and Shisui sits down patting the bit next to him. I shuffle over and _carefully_ walk to where he wants me to sit. I’d made it this far up but I was still human. _Heights_. I fall now and I’ll be a pancake.

I sit and swing my legs. I fix my hands to the trunk and I can’t resist the morbid urge to lean over and stare at the forest floor.

My stomach drops and my heart flutters. Yup. Pancake.

“Watch this.” Shisui tells me and lays a hand on the trunk of the tree. Then I stare as his fingers _glow_ with chakra and he outright _digs_ them into the tree trunk.

He comes away with a handful of splinters and shows me. I grab his hand and stare because… what the hell? What the actual hell? Shisui laughs.

“How do you think I did that?” He questions and I _knew_ the answer wasn’t just chakra. He’d… what’d he done? That was superhuman strength but not only that, his skin wasn’t even _scratched_.

The hell?

Shisui makes it easier on me and his fingertips begin to glow with chakra again and I gently poke at them.

I can feel the energy. _Shisui’s chakra_ and I focus on that. I try to figure out what he’s doing with a sixth sense I didn’t really understand.

There’s… almost two layers of energy. I frown.

“There’s… chakra outside.” I say and I don’t get it so I move on. The chakra inside fills his hand. “Are you… using chakra to make your hand stronger?”

That wasn’t exactly what he was doing but it’s the best my limited language skills can muster. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the skeletal and the muscular system as well but I didn’t know those words so I’m stuck just saying _hand_.

“Almost. Keep trying.” Shisui encourages and I huff. I go back to his glowing fingertips.

“Inside, you’re using chakra to make the inside stronger.” I say and Shisui nods. He also seems to realize that I _get it_. I get it that he’s using chakra to strengthen his muscles and bones but I don’t know how to say it. “I don’t know the outside.”

“Well, think about it this way, if I can make the _inside_ stronger, why not the outside?” Shisui questions and I frown at that. I got making muscles stronger, bones stronger. It’s… it’s like taking steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. But… the outside?

“Chakra’s not…” I say and wave my hands. “Chakra’s not hard.”

“It’s not.” Shisui prompts and I go back to the hand in frustration. I was getting how he wasn’t killing his core now. He’d simply funneled chakra into his muscles and bam, super-abs. What the hell I didn’t get was how he managed to claw through _bark_ without getting at least one splinter.

“I don’t get it.” I say admitting defeat and Shisui laughs.

“Okay, how about this.” He says and picking up a leaf holds it between his fingers for a second and then holds the leaf out to me. “Try and rip it.”

He doesn’t let go of the leaf so I try and rip the tip off. The leaf bends but it won’t rip. I frown at it and try again. Once again, it bends but it doesn’t rip.

I’m very aware that chakra has something to do with it but I have no clue _what_. How the hell? Shisui is very amused as I sit there twisting the leaf this way and that.

He’s not exactly using chakra to make the leaf _stiff_. He’s using chakra to… make the leaf stronger? That made no sense whatsoever. I fiddle with the leaf.

Shisui sees that I’m still stuck and the leaf starts to glow as he pumps more chakra into it. But I can sense it now. I sense it because there’s _more_. The chakra isn’t going _into_ the leaf, it’s coating it. Holding it together.

I suddenly get it. He’s using chakra to protect his skin, he’s not _letting_ his skin get torn because there’s chakra holding everything together.

“Woah. That’s cool.” I say because… this was armor. This was basically _invisible armor_.

It also suddenly explained why ninjas in this world were able to jump three stories with a single bound. They’d used chakra on their muscles and probably bones to give them the strength to make the leap _and_ protect themselves against broken bones on the landing.

All of a sudden this world made a little bit more sense. Why they taught children to throw lethal weapons like it was nothing, why they taught children to spew fire before they’d even entered _school_. Because these things weren’t _that_ lethal. Not against adults who had an omnipresent armor of pure _energy_. Not against adults faster, stronger and smarter.

It wasn’t my father being ridiculous. It was my father trying to give us a leg up in this world. Huh.

Shisui waits my epiphany out with a smile on his face and when I look over, I’m suddenly struck. Shisui’s looking at me like he _knows_ what sort of epiphany I just had. He’s looking at me like he’s been there before and suddenly I’m wondering if I’m the only one that remembers a past life.

I almost ask but change the question at the last possible second.

“What?”

“No, Itachi was right.” Shisui says easily and I frown at him.

“What’s Ita-nii right about?” I question but going by the look I already know. He’s on to me. Not about the whole past life. About the brains. I wince. “Is that why Sasu-nii’s not here?”

“I thought you’d do better if you weren’t purposely holding back.” Shisui said and there was no need to say that he was right. I suddenly feel awkward because half-assing things was a very _big_ no-no.

I’m very prepared for the lecture that’s no doubt going to follow. So what Shisui says next surprises me.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” He promises and I stare at him like he was crazy. Yeah, sure it was _my_ idea all along but… I did _not_ expect anyone to go along with it.

“Why?” I ask because it went against what every child was taught in our clan. It was why Itachi had shined so bright even when he didn’t have to. Why Shisui had been lorded a genius and there was even mutterings of him being promoted to jounin within the year.

“Hmmm, from one genius to another? I think you chose the better path.” Shisui admits with a rueful smile. “You should learn from our mistakes. Not repeat them, and I’m glad that you didn’t.”

I blink because… I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t expected Itachi to _know._ I knew that he’d _suspect_ maybe think me smarter than I was letting on but… genius? I shuffle awkwardly because I _wasn’t_ a genius. I was just older than my physical body let on. This was as smart as I was ever going to get.

Well, that could be wrong because intelligence could be _learned_. You were fully capable of increasing your intelligence if you trained your mind to do it. Street smarts, book smarts, and sheer experience. They all mattered.

Shisui smiles fully at ease.

“So, you ready to try?” He gestures to the tree trunk and I manage to stop reeling from the bombshell he’s dropped.

I put my hand up to the trunk of the tree next to the bit that Shisui’s already gouged out and try to figure out how to do two things at once.

“Coat the outside of your hand first, and then the inside. It’s easier that way.” Shisui advises and I do as bid. I dig my fingers into the bark and although I feel the pressure of it, the bark doesn’t break skin.

Then carefully, I add in the second step while keeping the glove of chakra on the _outside_. It is easier than I thought it would be. Like creating the glove and then _filling_ it. I understood why Shisui advised it now. Trying it the other way around would mean going through the already pooled chakra which would make it all ten times harder.

My hand digs into the bark and I watch in fascination as my fingers go into wood.

Oh I can feel the pressure, even slight pain. But I claw harder and the pain doesn’t intensify.

By the time I’ve got a chunk of tree in my hand, I’m kind of amazed.

I should have ripped out a nail at _least_ but nope. Not even a splinter.

Just for the heck of it, I crush the chunk I’d pulled out into pulpy splinters.

“Woah.” I say and Shisui laughs.

“Fun right?” He asks and I nod and giggle. It _was_ fun. “Think you’re ready for step two?”

I look at the trunk of the tree and then to Shisui.

“I don’t suppose I get a lift down?” I ask and Shisui laughs.

“Well how about this.” He plants a hand on the tree as well as a foot and then goes… sliding down the trunk of the tree like he’s being lowered from a rope. I stare and oh I _so_ want to learn that. He walks back up and laughs.

“Teach me.” I say immediately and Shisui smiles.

“First, you stick to the trunk of the tree, then, you just loosen your chakra and let gravity do the work.” He says and I could totally do that.

I eagerly attach myself to the tree and then soften the chakra that sticks me to the tree. Shisui had said ‘loosen’ but I’m pretty sure that the terms were interchangeable. I’m right and I go sliding down at breakneck speed. I whoop and laugh as my hair goes straight up into the air and I don’t begin to slow until I’ve almost reached the ground.

Fully controlled free-fall without any risk? Sign me up. Shisui snags me by the back of the collar as I’m about to go crawling up the tree for another go.

“How about we try running this time? Trust me, start at a run.” He advises and I sigh but back up so I can get some momentum going. Then I think better of it and walk closer. Better test out my feet first. No need to face-plant in my eagerness.

I stand there and stick and then un-stick my feet to the tree for a good three minutes before I deem myself proficient. Then I back up and eye the lowest branch. Shouldn’t be too hard.

“You’ll catch me if I fall right?” I ask Shisui just in case and he laughs.

“If I don’t, Itachi will make sure you never find my body.” He says amused and I eye the trunk of the tree again. I could totally do this.

I take a deep breath and run for it.

My first steps are solid but I’m losing momentum and gravity is acting and I’d forgotten about that bit. I put more chakra in it and after that put some into my core muscles so I don’t flop backwards and break my spine. Or my ankles.

I stagger because I’m not used to funneling chakra in two separate places at once but once it’s actually _done_ keeping it going is actually easier than I anticipated.

I make it to the branch with only a slight slip that I recover from without help.

Shisui is of course already there. He’s there and he’s smiling and he offers me a hand up for the last few inches. I let him pull me onto the branch.

“Does this mean I get to slide down again?” I ask and Shisui laughs at my need for speed.

“In a bit.” He promises and we settle onto the branch again. “Are you ready to learn the shunshin now?”

“Finally.” I breathe out and give him my full attention. Shisui snorts.

“Hey, be grateful, most ninja don’t learn this until they’re at least _chuunin_.” Shisui says and I was not going to take _that_ laying down. I bat my eyelashes.

“I’m sorry oh great Shisui-sensei-sama. Please teach me the cool jutsu before I push you off this tree.” I say and Shisui splutters.

“Sensei-sama?!” He demands and I grin at the ridiculous honorific. I make a motion as if I’m going to push him off and he huffs. “Now I remember your havoc-causing reputation.”

“Shiny new jutsu.” I demand and Shisui rolls his eyes.

“Demanding little thing aren’t you.” He laments but launches into the explanation anyway. “The shunshin is actually a very simple jutsu which is why it’s so widely used. But most don’t take the time to _master_ the technique so the most they do is use it for a quick getaway. If you’re proficient enough though, you can learn to do the jutsu without seals and with enough practice, you can _own_ the battlefield.”

Hearing Shisui talk about a little jutsu that’s probably barely a step up from the basic academy three, I realize that it’s his favorite jutsu. It’s his favorite jutsu and he thoroughly enjoys abusing the hell out of it. I approved.

“The basis of the shunshin is simple. You use chakra to temporarily grant you immense speed. The more chakra you use, the faster you go. But you have to keep your destination very clearly in mind. It’s not space-time ninjutsu, you still have to _get_ there yourself.” Shisui warns and promptly dashes my dreams of teleportation. But it was still cool fake-teleportation. I’ll take what I could get. “Remember keep your destination clearly in mind and for god’s sake _know_ how you plan to get there.”

“Or else… splat?” I guessed and Shisui nodded.

“ _Big_ splat.” He tells me dryly and yeah I got that physics still worked in this world even if Chakra let you defy them for a bit. Force equals mass times acceleration. It was why a bullet could kill you. Lots of acceleration. I imagined running high-speed into a tree and winced. Chakra armor or no chakra armor that wouldn’t be pretty. Broken bones at _least_.

But hey, what was teleportation without a little risk?

My need for speed was great.

Shisui takes me through the hand seals one by one and then we race down the trunk. Shisui beats me because I’m pretty sure he’d somehow used chakra to make himself go _faster_.

I’m very envious and Shisui laughs when I hit the ground.

“Ready to give it a try?” He asks and I nod eagerly. “Alright, just to that patch of weeds there. You see it?”

Shisui points straight ahead and I see the patch of weeds. I nod. There’s no trees or roots in the way.

I form the seals and feel how the chakra wraps around my entire body and then _anchors_ to that patch of weeds. I grin and complete the jutsu.

I’m suddenly _pulled_ and I shriek in laughter as I go shooting across the forest floor. I end up in that patch of weeds in a swish of wind and I’m grinning like a loon.

I don’t even need Shisui to prompt my next attempt. Since I’m not an idiot, I pick somewhere within eyeshot again. I pick the cheerful flower bobbing in the wind. I form the seals and I’m off again with a whoop.

Shisui takes a seat at the base of some tree and lets me get the excitement out of my system.

The more I use it though, the more I begin to think that it’s less of a full blown jutsu and more of a _chakra trick_. Like the tree climbing thing and the leaf exercise. It’s just got a fancier name.

I wonder if I can cut out a couple of seals but since I don’t want to screw it up, I ask first.

“Shisui-san, is it okay if I cut out the seals at random? Or do I need an order?” I ask and Shisui’s got a stem of sour-grass in his mouth that he’s chewing through.

“As long as you mold the chakra correctly it doesn’t matter what seals you take out.” He informs me easily and I eagerly start trying.

My first attempt has the shunshin failing completely because my chakra didn’t manage to anchor properly and nothing happened.

Cutting out seals meant that I had to focus more closely on what the chakra was doing which made me realize that each individual seal prompted the chakra to flow _differently_. It was like a code.

It was slow going though because I had to do it properly with all the seals, cut one out, fail, and then try and figure out what my chakra had done _differently_. Then I’d have to try and get my chakra to do _that exact thing_ or else I’d once again, fail.

I was so focused on it that it was honestly a shock when Shisui declared that we really ought to be getting back.

I suddenly realized that the sun was setting. I wondered if the cats were out of the trees yet.

Shisui takes me home with a shunshin and I’m left giggling on the doorstep of my house. Shisui winks and waves before vanishing.

It’s Itachi that opens the door.

“Ita-nii! Hi!” I say still giddy from all the speed and grinning like a loon.

“Hello Chi-chan.” Itachi says smiling and he doesn’t ask me how my day was. I was betting that he already knew. Come to think of it, he was probably the one that put Shisui up to this impromptu lesson.

I surged forwards and wrapped my arms around his middle. Itachi is surprised for a second and he stiffens but then he’s relaxing and hugging me back.

“Thank you Ita-nii. It was fun.” I say to his stomach quietly and Itachi chuckles.

“I’m glad you had fun.” Itachi says softly and we part because there’s Sasuke’s rapid footsteps pattering down the halls.

“Chi-chan! Did you get all the cats stuck in trees?” He demands grinning and I give him my best innocent look.

“No?” I ask and Kaa-san huffs as she emerges from the kitchen wiping her hands on the apron around her waist.

“Oh? Then why was there day-old fish strung up in almost every tree all of a sudden?” She asks amused and I shrug.

“I don’t know.” I say with full confidence and Kaa-san huffs a little laugh.

“Well go wash up for dinner.” She tells me and I beam and run up the stairs. I hadn’t even been grounded. Score!

Since we were drawing close to the academy beginning, Sasuke pestered Itachi more and more to help us train for it.

Itachi started taking us out for little day-trips just to get some peace and quiet. He was still running missions almost every day which meant Sasuke _pestering him_ almost every day. With the little training-days that Itachi came up with, the pestering didn’t get to puppy-eye levels until three weeks of no Itachi.

I had a feeling that it was Shisui that came up with the idea since he tagged along sometimes.

Training with Itachi was… _fun_. Sasuke took it dead serious at times, but honestly, it was more like _play_. We didn’t drill kata, we sort of… did cool kunai tricks. Cool flips and twirls. Just… things that took skill but were… _fun_. Fun to do, to watch, to _try_.

Itachi wasn’t above showing off from time to time though, especially when baited into a competition with Shisui.

They’d amazed Sasuke and I when they had a kunai-throwing competition. They had ten kunai each and two throws. So five kunai had to be thrown at once to hit ten separate targets.

My aim was pretty damned good, I could hit the bulls eye with three kunai and four shurikin thrown at once ten times out of ten. But this was a completely different ball game.

Sasuke wasn’t the only one watching wide eyed as Shisui went first. He took the simple approach. He covered one side, then the other. One kunai just _barely_ edged the bullseye line though and Shisui sighed.

“Looks like the loss will be mine.” He laments as he steps back for Itachi’s go.

Itachi just flat out shows off.

He jumps in the air, throws the first handful, summersaults, and while he’s _upside down_ throws the second handful.

There’s the sound of metal on metal and I duck on instinct because that was a _crazy_ move. But when we look back up, all ten kunai are stuck dead center on their respective targets.

“Nii-san’s so cool!” Sasuke says in awe and I nod slightly numbly. What… what kind of god-like aim was _that_? He had changed the trajectory of the _moving_ kunai with more kunai. But it’s not even that. He’d have to take into account how the trajectory of the _second_ throw would be changed from hitting the _first_ batch and… just… damned geniuses.

“I wanna learn… can that even be taught?” I say thoroughly amazed and Shisui laughs.

“Maybe when you’re a little older.” Itachi says amused and slightly smug. I look to Sasuke.

“We’re gonna learn that. I don’t care how many hours of training we have to do. We are _so_ going to learn that.” I say and Sasuke gives his head a firm nod.

“Agreed.” He says and we shake on it. Shisui is alternating between laughing and cooing and Itachi is just fond.

The training days don’t all go that well.

Sasuke is bull-headed stubborn when it comes to learning some new ninja-related thing. Be it memorizing all the capitals of the Elemental Nations or that cool spin-kick Itachi showed us one time. Since he’s so bull-headed stubborn, he absolutely _refuses_ to wait.

Which is why we’re in our predicament right now. Itachi carrying Sasuke home on his back. It’s because the little brat hadn’t taken no for an answer and gone and twisted his ankle something fierce.

“Kaa-san is going to scold _all_ of us.” I whine even as I walk next to Itachi through Uchiha’s main strip.

“What? No she won’t.” Sasuke complains. He’s sulky because he didn’t get the move down _and_ because of the injury.

“She so will and this time, it’s _your_ fault.” I say and then perk up at the thought “Hey! You might get grounded too!”

“No way!” Sasuke denies nearly unseating himself from Itachi’s back. “Kaa-san won’t do that.”

“Well, we’re about to find out.” Itachi says amused and we all see Kaa-san walking briskly down the street shopping basket in hand. Uh-oh.

Turns out, Kaa-san was _not_ happy. And Sasuke was _not_ grounded which was all types of unfair. He was however thrown into a whole _new_ brand of hell. Manners.

Kaa-san had decided that five years old was a prime time to instruct Sasuke on manners also. Since Sasuke had twisted his ankle and thus couldn’t _escape_ he was well and truly trapped. Poor Sasuke was bored out of his skull. I escaped and climbed a tree. I wasn’t the one that twisted an ankle. Maybe the kid will learn from this.

He didn’t. He went right back to those spin-kicks the second he was cleared to run around. Honestly, that child. I worried for the kid sometimes, I really did.

That year we trained harder, trained longer and muscle soreness was the norm. Tou-san seemed hell bent on getting us into the top of the class and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop him.

Kaa-san kept reminding me to be nice to all the other kiddies and to watch out for any other Uchiha clan kids in the academy. That was the thing about Uchiha. We might act like assholes with ten foot poles up our asses but we fought for our own. That was what made the Military Police such a good unit. You messed with one, you messed with them _all_. Most clans were like that. The Inuzuka though were the most intense. There _had_ been that mauling incident… but we weren’t supposed to talk about that. It stopped absolutely no one from talking about it. As the rumor has it, some Uchiha was so enraged that they literally mauled someone. Now there’s a sight I wanted to see.

With the Academy looming ever closer, everyone and their grandmother had advice for us. Do this, do that, you have to know this, you have to know that. I swear I’ve got the whole academy curriculum memorized going back thirty years at this point.

Uchiha looked after their own. Even if ‘looked after’ meant pestering them to death. Thank god for Itachi who despite being thoroughly _abnormal_ gave the most _normal_ piece of scholarly advice.

Itachi told us to do our best and pay attention in class. You know, normal stuff.

He also put a lot of stress on ‘enjoying our years at the academy’ which I think was his way of drilling ‘don’t graduate early’ into my skull.

By the time I was due to being the academy I had perfected paint-balloon-bombs and as my going-away present to the Uchiha district pelted everyone with them.

I had been double-grounded after being delivered to the police station by _three_ paint-splattered Uchiha but it was so worth it. Tou-san hadn’t even bothered to lecture me after the three Uchiha left. He’d just grounded me and told me to do a food run for him. He even gave me some lunch money to get myself something to eat.

But that was my last hurrah.

The next day was the first day of school.


End file.
